Carlisle Cooper (1919 - )

Painter Carlisle Cooper has always been concerned with the human condition - the problem of man’s relationship to Truth and the problem of man’s soul/psyche remaining individualistic and triumphant over the mechanized and computerized era in which we find ourselves. He believes that art’s important role in this era is what it has always been in history - - to reveal man to himself.

A native of North Carolina, Cooper attended Duke University, Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, American Academy of Art (Chicago), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (B.A.E. and M.A.E. degrees) and in the Los Angeles area, Chouinard and U.C.L.A. He has been an art professor for many years at Ventura Community College in California.

Among his teachers, he lists Isobel McKinnon Rupprecht and Edgar Rupprecht (who were original students and sponsors of Hans); Boris Anisfeld, internationally known Russian painter and former set-designer for the Metropolitan Opera House, New York; and William Mosby (graduate of Brussels Academy of Fine Art, Belgium).

As a young man, before studying to become an artist, Mr. Cooper originated and drew an adventure type cartoon strip, entitiled “Fighting with Daniel Boone”. The strip was syndicated nationally by the Chicago Tribune/NewYork daily news syndicate, appearing weekly for several years in cities across America, including Chicago, New York, Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles. The strip was terminated due to Cooper’s military war service.

During the past few years Cooper has had over 25 one-man exhibitions of his work in Southern California. In 1984, he was invited to exhibit 50 of his smaller paintings in Berlin during the annual Berlin Festwochen, the week during which the fall and winter season opens there. Under the auspices of the American Embassy in Germany, the exhibition was later sent to Heidelberg, and then to Darmstadt for a month-long showing in each city. In 1988, the artist also had another exhibition of his small paintings in Munich, Germany. Cooper’s artisitic exploration of the human animal continues to this day. He was recently given 3 merit awards by the Buenaventura Art Association and has had two 1999 exhibitions at Ventura’s Art City II.