| Robert Laessig | ||
| Birth Date: 1913 |
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| Death Date: 2010 Artist Gallery |
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| A final burst of color – a warm fall day – a foreboding sense of the winter to come. Do you suppose the two ladybugs realize luck has been on their side this autumn day? Maybe they will be safe for another day or until they choose the path that will cross through the spider’s web.
Robert Laessig was born in New Jersey in 1913. He completed studies at the Textile Design Institute in Plauen, Germany and at the Art Students League in New York. When Laessig began his career, it was as a textile designer, specializing in the study and painting of flowers in textile design until World War II.
From 1943 to 1945, Laessig recorded combat activity in the Pacific from the Fiji Islands to the Philippine Islands. He served with the 13th Air Force Historical division as a combat artist. In his free time he would paint watercolors of the day to day life at camp. The watercolors produced at this time became part of a chronology of the campaign waged on the various islands.
After the war, Irving Stone of American Greeting Corporation persuaded Laessig to come to Cleveland. Among some of his work at American Greetings was the creation of Christmas cards for President Lyndon Johnson during his administration as President.
Laessig was hesitant to leave American Greetings Corporation because of the steady income and association with other artists. Once Laessig made the decision to leave the company, he began to devote 80 to 90 hours a week to his painting. In order to prepare for a painting, he used an elaborate process. Laessig states that: “I start one of my floras from a 1,000 foot role of white non-woven cloth which I cut, crush and treat with repeated applications of paraffin and color in the batik-printing manner. At the last stage the sheets are ironed between newspaper to remove the wax before beginning the drawing of the floral forms and the final painting of the intricate detail that has become my identifying signature.”
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