Karl Kasten
Karl Kasten
b. 1916 - d. 2010
Born in San Francisco, attended U.C. Berkeley (B. 1938, M.S. 1939), the University of Iowa, and the Hans Hofmann School in Provincetown, Mass. Kasten's early painting combined the gestural brushwork and thick textures of Abstract Expressionism with a more firmly geometric substructure. The formal elements became more pronounced in his paintings of the mid-1960's, and eventually came to dominate a hard-edged by softly textured architectural abstraction. An influential teacher at U.C. Berkleley from the 1950s throught the early 1980s.
He was a member of what was considered 'The Berkeley School', under the influence of Hans Hofmann, and whose members included Erle Loran, John Haley, James McCray, Sonya Rapaport and others.
- Thomas Albright