Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 26, 1928.
Died in Saint Louis Park, Minnesota, September 22, 2009.
Richard F. Lack
Richard F. Lack was one of the most versatile and influential pupils of Boston artist R. H. Ives Gammell. His artistic training began at the Minneapolis School of Art, but his interest in the classical traditions soon led him to the atelier of Ives Gammell, with whom he studied for five years in the Fenway Studios in Boston from 1950 to 1956. This training was interrupted for two years of service in the U.S. Army. In 1955 he traveled to Europe on a scholarship to study the Old Masters, particularly Peter Paul Rubens, whose work has greatly influenced him both in style and method. In 1957 he returned to Minneapolis with his wife, Katherine, purchased a home, and built a studio designed to simulate the lighting conditions recommended in the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. There he began to paint a variety of work — still life, portrait, genre, landscape, and imaginative paintings based on myth, history, and the psychology of C. G. Jung. The superb quality of Lack’s work and the importance of his teaching methods earned him a scholarship from the John F. and Anna Lee Stacy Scholarship Fund and three grants from the Elizabeth T. Greenshields Memorial Foundation in Montreal, Canada.
Trimbelle River Valley, 1974. Oil on canvas, 20 x 24.
Private collection.
In 1969 he founded Atelier Lack, Inc., a small, non-profit studio school of drawing and painting with an apprentice program based on the teaching methods of the 19th century French ateliers and the Boston impressionists. His sound training, experience with diverse painting methods and mastery of so many genres of painting made him a uniquely qualified teacher. For many years his atelier was the only place outside of Boston where students could be trained in that tradition and he has had several important students, including Allan R. Banks, Gary Hoffmann, James Childs, Paul DeLorenzo, Charles Cecil, Kirk Richards, Carl Samson, Jeffrey T. Larson, Peter Bougie, Michael Chelich, and John Seibels Walker. He retired from teaching in 1992 due to ill health.
Mother and Child, 1962. Oil on canvas, 40 x 30. Lack family collection.
During his long career Lack exhibited in eighty-seven solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, and won twenty-seven awards, medals, and grants. In 1988 the Maryhill Museum of Art in Goldendale, Washington held a large retrospective of his work. Throughout his career Lack was a highly sought after portrait artist and he painted many notable figures, among them six portraits for the Kennedy family in Hyannisport, MA, a portrait for England’s sixth Eardley-Wilmot Baronet, and Minnesota Governors Wendell Anderson and Albert Quie.
Metamorphosis of the Gods, 1969.
Oil on panel, 42 x 47.
Private collection.
During his latter years he devoted most of his time and energy to painting a series of large works based on Jungian psychology, which depict man’s inner journey toward individuation and psychological wholeness.