George Vranesh (1926 - 2014)

After service in the Navy during WWII, Minnesota born Vranesh received an MA degree in anthropology from the University of Iowa before beginning studies at the Art Students League under Will Barnet. Here he began to absorb the tenets of modernism, influenced by artists such as Ozenfant and Hofmann. He also was influenced by the Indian Space Painters, who had already disbanded by the time he arrived in New York in the mid-50s; his combined interests in modernism, anthropology and native American mythology informed his work. From 1959 through 1965 Vranesh spent summers in Alaska.