Walter Askin

Askin was born in Pasadena, California in 1929.[1] His father was a draftsperson who worked for the city of Pasadena, and his brother was an architect. He learned to draw from an early age.[4] Askin studied art at Pasadena City College with Leonard Edmondson and went on to study at University of California, Berkeley.[5]

Askin's work has been described as lighthearted and humorous, with an undercurrent of a serious tone, including content on the "dichotomous relationship between the sexes and the criticism of art itself." He has been inspired by both Western and non-Western art.[4]

Work by Askin was included in the 1956 group exhibition Recent Drawings U.S.A. at MoMA,[6] [3] the Kunstlerhaus Vienna, [1] the Whitney Museum of Art[1] and other venues. In 2016, his work was part of the two-person show, Reality Reorganized: Walter Askin and Wayne Kimball’s Mysterious Discursions at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art.[1]

Askin was Professor of Art at California State University, Los Angeles from 1956 to 1992.[7]

A recorded interview and transcript of the interview is available at the Smithsonian American Archives of Art.[2] An archive of his papers from 1950–1992 is held in the Archives of American Art.[8]

His work is included in collections of the National Gallery of Art,[9] the Norton Simon Museum,[4] the Albright Knox Gallery,[10] Princeton University Art Museum[11] and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.[12]