Maurice Lapp
Blue Squares
c. 1960s
Acrylic on Canvas Board
8" x 6", unframed
Signed Lapp in paint in lower left corner.
Good Condition-minor water damage on top left corner
Maurice Lapp (1925-2014), painter and educator, was born in Chicago, Illinois on June 17, 1925. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he earned both a BFA and MFA. Lapp studied painting abroad in 1950 on a Ryerson Foreign Travel Fellowship, and in 1956 received a Fulbright Grant. The artist's best-known works were his vivid paintings of the San Francisco cityscape, particularly its coffeehouses.
After settling in Northern California in 1952, Lapp began teaching painting at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. In 1956 he moved north to Santa Rosa, California where he joined the art faculty at the Santa Rosa Junior College. He remained at the Junior College until his retirement in 1992, but his teaching career did not end there. Lapp was a popular instructor and continued to mentor part-time until the age of 87. He had a strong work ethic and painted daily.
Lapp had numerous solo exhibitions in his long career, including at the Oakland Museum of California, the Santa Rosa Junior College, the Memorial Union Gallery of the University of California at Davis, the Stevenson College Gallery at the University of California in Santa Cruz, the Walnut Creek Civic Arts Center, the School of Education at Stanford University, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor at San Francisco, and the American Cultural Institute in Mexico.
His work was featured in group exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Denver Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Oakland Museum of California, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, and Expo 1970 in Osaka, Japan.
His work is represented in the collections of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Oakland Museum of California, the City of San Francisco, the City of Santa Rosa, and the Santa Rosa Junior College Library, as well as numerous private collections.
