“These transfixing paintings depict a world both interior and exterior, a place of the spirit as much as the mind, where floating sumptuous fields of symbolic natural forms tantalize the beholder.”
— David Cleveland
Ralph Wickiser (1910–1998) was a seminal American painter and educator whose six-decade career bridged abstraction and representation. Born in Illinois, Wickiser trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and Eastern Illinois University before embarking on a distinguished teaching career that included leadership roles at Louisiana State University, SUNY New Paltz, and ultimately Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he served as Director of Graduate Programs in Art and Design from 1962 to 1975.
Wickiser’s artistic evolution moved from early representational works into Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s, before finding his most personal and enduring voice in nature-based abstraction. His celebrated Reflected Stream series (1975–1998) explored the visual and symbolic language of reflection, light, and surface, drawn from the streams near his Woodstock home. Wickiser was also a widely published author on art education, with influential texts that shaped American art pedagogy.
Throughout his career, Wickiser received numerous honors including multiple Louis Comfort Tiffany Fellowships, an honorary doctorate from Eastern Illinois University, and emeritus status at Pratt. His works are held in major institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Cincinnati Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Library of Congress, and others.