Born in Benton County in the Ozark
Mountains of Missouri, Frederick Grant Stussy (Jan Stussy) grew up in Southern California,
where his family had moved in 1924. Studying in California schools, including the
Art Center School of Design, he graduated in 1944 from the University of California,
Los Angeles (UCLA), where he studied art with Stanton MacDonald Wright with whom he
remained friends for many years. He then served for two years in the Intelligence Division
of the U.S. Navy during World War II.
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Returning to Los Angeles in 1946, Stussy taught painting
and printmaking at UCLA while earning his graduate MFA degree at USC. |
He
exhibited widely in many museums and galleries throughout the United States-- keeping up a
high level of exhibition activity throughout his life.
In 1949, he married sculptor Maxine Kim Carlyle. The Stussys
organized joint exhibitions of their work, and as a handsome and photogenic couple with a
flair for art and design, they were eagerly sought after by the press. The following
decades were productive ones during which time Stussy received a painting commission
from the Container Corporation of America for its "Great Ideas of Western Man"
series, had two solo exhibitions in Chile, was the subject of an article in Time
magazine, and was appointed Professor of Art at UCLA.
The
1970s brought Stussy a number of important grants: a Ford Foundation grant to be a
Resident Artist at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles; an UCLA Art
Council grant to research and paint in Japan where he studied rock gardens at Ryoan-ji;
and a grant to work at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
He began working with film in 1974 as he performed and
filmed the dissection of human cadavers for his anatomy classes. He continued his interest
in filmmaking and produced the documentary film "Gravity is my Enemy" which
focused on the struggles and achievements of a young quadriplegic art student Mark Hicks
at UCLA. He won an Academy Award for producing this film, which also went on to receive 9
other film festival awards.
In 1981, in celebration of his 60th birthday, he undertook
his first parachute jump and broke his back. This experience resulted in a series of
"jump" paintings during the next 1 1/2 years. ( See photo #4 on this page.)
Divorced from his wife, Maxine Kim Stussy, in 1982, he
illustrated a book of poetry The Furtive Wall by Daniel
Haberman. He enjoyed this collaboration as he also wrote poetry (but never published).
During this period he traveled to Nepal and Thailand, Easter Island, Tahiti, Morea, and
Bora-Bora where he studied the stone sculpture and petroglyphs.
In 1989 he retired from teaching at UCLA and
collaborated with his family and colleagues in establishing the Jan Stussy Foundation. He
died on July 31, 1990 as the result of a brain tumor.
This biography was based on the book:
The Odyssey of Jan Stussy in Black and White
Anxious Visions and Uncharted Dreams
by Albert Boime with Paul Arden
Published by The Jan Stussy Foundation
Los Angeles, 1995
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-78057
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