Arthur Secunda (born November 12, 1927 in Jersey City, New Jersey) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker who’s career has spanned six decades. He first studied at the Detroit Institute of Arts as a teenager and continued his studies at the Art Students League of New York and at New York University. After spending time in the United States Air Force as an artist, Secunda used his GI bill to study in Mexico, Paris and Italy with many great artists and teachers. As a result, Secunda developed a lifelong propensity for travel– living and working in other countries. For decades, he maintained studios in Paris and LA.
Secunda considers himself a landscape artist, and has developed his own iconography in representing nature, the land and its forms, as well as corresponding inner landscapes. He is known for a specific kind of color gradation and blending of forms in many media. He is also known for his brilliant collages and graphics. His work tends to oscillate between the serene —striated colors in landscapes — to the expressive, as in many of his oil paintings.
Secunda’s art is worldwide
Secunda has held over 140 solo exhibitions around the world, including in the United States, Israel, France, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, Spain, and Japan. His artwork is part of private collections around the world and over 100 museums worldwide have acquired Secunda’s artwork. He is represented in most major museums, including the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C., the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Norton Simon Museum—Pasadena, CA, the National Gallery of Australia; Bibliotheque Nationale—Paris, France; and the National Museum in Stockholm, Sweden.
After years in Paris, Secunda maintained a studio in Scottsdale, Arizona for ten years, and currently maintains one in Boulder, Colorado, doing what he has done in all of the other places he has lived and worked in the last 65 years — creating imagery.
Secunda has worked as a jazz musician–in Paris in the early days to support himself, and as a milkman; as an art critic, lecturer, curator, writer and publisher. Periodically, he consults at NASA where he is an image visualizer, helping translate scientific data into visual images. Highly respected as a teacher, he has spent time in Lacoste, France teaching a master class in collage and the creation of handmade artists books.
The Arthur Secunda Museum
The Arthur Secunda Museum at Cleary University in Michigan pays tribute to the life and artwork of Secunda, who began his career as an artist in Michigan. Secunda currently enjoys participating in the Purple Art program at PACE and has been the Artist of the Month, where his art has been displayed throughout the facility.
