William Quinn (1929-2022)

Following the conclusion of World War II, William Quinn enrolled in the emerging art program at Washington University in St. Louis, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1953. After graduation, he moved to New York to join the Abstract Expressionist movement, which elevated an American city to the forefront of the art world for the first time in history.

Quinn could have spent his career in New York, but instead returned to service with the U.S. Army as a training-aids illustrator for two years, before returning to the midwest and leveraging the G.I. Bill to acquire a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Illinois.

Quinn then returned to St. Louis, joining the faculty of his alma mater to teach drawing and painting. This geographic separation from New York distanced him from the personal angst and pressure of the aesthetic revolution felt by many artists on the east coast, but not from the tenets and practice of modern art.

At Washington University - where expressionists Max Beckmann and Philip Guston had recently taught - Quinn’s 33-year teaching career enabled him to engage with American and European painters on the latest ideas and issues in contemporary art, while also providing ample time to practice in his studio. His tenure with the university also afforded him the opportunity to travel and work extensively in Europe, with residencies and sabbaticals in Rome, Paris, and Greece. In his work, Quinn uniquely synthesized the elements of European modernism with the gestural style of “Action Painting” - a hallmark of some American Abstract Expressionists.

Quinn exhibited widely in the U.S. and Europe over the decades, with his work included in the permanent collections of the Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis, the High Museum (Atlanta), the Nelson-Atkins Gallery of Art (Kansas City), the Butler Institute of American Art (Youngstown, OH), the St. Louis Art Museum, among many others.

After his retirement from teaching in 1991, Quinn moved with his Belgian-born wife Jeannine to Bruges, Belgium and Vence, France, spending the better part of two decades before returning to the U.S.  He died in Connecticut in December 2022.

Source: The Artist