Biography from Tucson Museum of Art:
| Arizona artist Warren Anderson works in Prismacolor on paper to record the fast-vanishing signs and sites of the American road. Closely cropping his compositions, he deftly renders every detail and nuance of the neon signs that advertise roadside motels, old movie theaters and other businesses from a bygone era.
Presented more as “dignified relics” than cultural oddities, Anderson’s works become nostalgic remembrances by the sheer selection of the images, not the manner in which they are articulated. In the spirit of the first generation Photo-Realists, Anderson makes no attempt to idealize what he draws, rendering his signs in all their dilapidated glory. Rich in detail, he highlights gas station pumps, smiling cowboys, “end of the trail” Indians, neon-outlined bathing beauties and saguaro cacti from roadside Americana.
Born in 1925 in Moline, Illinois, Anderson received a Bachelor of Science degree from Western Illinois University in 1950. In 1951 he obtained a Master of Arts degree from the University of Iowa and ten years later he received a Ph.D. from Stanford University in art education. From 1956 until 1986 he was a Professor of Art at the University of Arizona. Anderson’s drawings have been included in exhibitions at the El Paso Museum of Art, the Phoenix Art Museum, the University of Arizona, the University of New Mexico, the San Diego Automotive Museum, the Yuma Fine Arts Center, the Tempe Arts Center and the Museum of Neon Art in Los Angeles. |
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