The Likeness of a Beautiful Thing

Johannes was born in Germany in 1931 and came to the U.S. in the winter of 1949-50. He graduated 1955 in Illustration at Rhode Island School of Design and continued with Painting at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. He received an MFA at Yale in 1962, studying color under Josef Albers. He taught several years each at University of Illinois, serving as head of Basic Design, and at Kalamazoo College, MI, as department chairman. From there he continued to work privately, with creative art, writing, and community teaching, first for twenty years in Lancaster, PA and, after retirement, in Rhode Island. Johannes von Gumppenberg has a lifelong interest in modern art and design which inspired him to explore the fundamentals underlying new freedoms. Over the years as he expressed his ideas in prepared plates, he used his own teachings to make each illustration an individual work of art. He has earlier published two books on these artistic explorations, and other publications are still planned for his art concerns and essays on philosophical subjects.