George Vander Sluis was a painter in acrylics of figure, portrait and landscape, a muralist, and an art educator, who spent much of his career in Syracuse, New York. There he was a Professor of Painting and Drawing at Syracuse University beginning 1947. Between 1940 and 1942, and 1945 to 1947, he was a teacher at the Colorado Fine Arts Center in Colorado Springs.

He studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Colorado Fine Arts Center and from 1951 to 1952, had a Fulbright Scholarship to Italy. Other recognition included receiving a Ford Foundation grant and being named Outstanding Educator of America in 1975.

George Vander Sluis was a muralist for the WPA in the 1930s. Murals from that period and subsequent commissions are on barns in Central New York State, in the post offices of Rifle, Colorado and Riverton Wyoming and the Hotel Syracuse in New York.

EXHIBITIONS:
Kansas City Art Institute, 1942 (prize); Denver Art Museum, 1942 (prize); Arists West of the Mississippi, 1940,41; Corcoran Gallery of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; and Minneapolis Institute of Art.

His work in Cleveland Museum of Art, Rochester (NY) Memorial Art Gallery, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute (Utica, NY), New York University, Brookings Institute (Washington, DC) and St. Lawrence University.

Source:
Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, Exhibition Catalog: "Pikes Peak Vision, The Broadmoor Art Academy 1919-1945", 1989

Courtesy of Tad Bickley, Tad Bickley, CAI, CAGA, Best Of The West Auctions
Colorado Springs, CO

In 1945, Mr. Vander Sluis was stationed at Camp Shelby in Hattiesburg Mississippi. A drawing he did of the downtown area of Hattiesburg, signed and dated on the front, shows his Camp Shelby address on the back.

It is therefore be assumed that he was enlisted in the Army from 1942 and 1945, between his teaching assignments at the Colorado Fine Arts Center.

Information courtesy of Larry T. Johnson.