Biographical notes

Charles Keeling Lassiter was born in New York in 1926. He received a degree in sociology from Yale University and in art education from New York University. He went on to study at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture where he was awarded a second prize in painting. He also took courses with such professors as Reubam Tam, Sidney Simon and Ann Poor at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, and then took up teaching for a while. He subsequently has devoted his time exclusively to painting and writing poetry. Draw ing inspiration from the likes of Ensor, Dubuffet, Bosch, and Klee, and from the Cobra group's research projects, he has gradually forged his own plastic and pictorial language: an inventive and poetic approach that relies a heavily on irony and causticity. The innumerable characters staged by his works are the product of mixed techniques on supports of all kinds. The material context is but a pretext to underscore the mechanisms of our society, of our very civilization. Lassiter first put his work on display in 1956 at the group show for drawing held by New York's MOMA. While living and working in New York, the artist is a frequent visitor to Switzerland where, since 1981, his work can be seen at the Galerie Kara in Geneva, Switzerland.

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