The Silver Circle Gallery Presents “Panels” Paintings By Donald E. Munson

Jan. 29, 2013 - PRLog -- Born in New York, Donald Munson received his professional Certificate for Design and a BFA from Parsons.  At Parsons he studied under the acclaimed artist and member of the Bauhaus, Josef Albers. Munson found inspiration in works by Albers, Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian and Kenneth Noland. Don has taught drawing, illustration, art history, design, typography and advertising at Parsons, Pratt and City University of New York.

For the past 45 years, Donald Munson has earned his place in the art world as a renowned illustrator, graphic designer, and painter with an impressive resume and list of exhibitions and affiliations in the New York Art scene, and his work is in private and public art collections throughout the world. Noteworthy are the facts that his work is in the permanent collection in the Museum of Modern Art, Hecksher Museum in Huntington, NY, the Society of Illustrators Museum of American Illustration in NYC, and he is in the private collections of such people as David Carson and Joerg & Savine Lichtenberg.  Don developed nine commonly used fonts and he served as the vice president of Random House from 1979-1991, where he worked as the Division Vice President, Art Director and created covers for over 500 books. He worked with such authors as William Golding and Isaac Assimov, ultimately winning the Chesley Award as Best Art Director in 1991. Early in his career Donald worked with Salvador Dali at the MoMA, teaching him to utilize a new technique for producing art cards. Mr. Munson has also worked on Broadway set designs, and has had such clients as Readers Digest and New York Times.

Color is an everlasting theme in Munson’s work and he has concurrently achieved balance and tension within his pieces by mastering it. “Donald Munson is a poet singing the joy of nature, using color and line to produce a poem in visual terms. He has a personal style of great distinction …to evolve from sensitive line …into work one finds a combination of love and understanding of both nature and form” (Eva Gatling, Ex. Officio, The Heckscher Museum).
Optical illusions are created as he tactfully places colors on top of one another so that they appear transparent and thus create new colors. Munson favors metaphorical biomorphic shapes to create a familiarity within his compositions summon the viewer to interpret the work with personal associations and experiences.  Notes Claude LeSuer of Art Speak in Soho, NY, (Donald)  “…balances geometric and biomorphic elements to create exquisite formal tensions in his paintings of flowing forms.”

Currently Mr. Munson teaches Graphic Design, Typography, Fundamentals and Art History at Westfield State University, MA.