About William Joseph Anastasi

  • Biography

    William Anastasi was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 11, 1933. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania from 1953 to 1958. He is an artist noted for his conceptual coolness and seriously irreverent wit. For example, at the entrance to the Scott Hanson Gallery was a piece from 1967, a stick-on wall label that reads:

    William Anastasi
    b. 1933
    Label 1967
    Type of paper

    Next to it was another label that said the same thing. It was the label's label.

    In 1963, he started making "blind" drawings and paintings in which he covered a canvas or paper with a kind of automatic writing done with his eyes closed. The lines were long and looping and formed a tangled skein across the surface. There was a strong f...

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