Sisyphus
Guy Anderson
Seattle Convention Center
A painting by one of the celebrated Northwest Mystics recounts a Greek myth.
In the Greek myth of Sisyphus, a greedy king is forever doomed to roll a stone up a hill in Hades, only for it to roll back down again. As in this painting on two panels, internationally known painter Guy Anderson depicted a human figure alongside symbols drawn from his studies of myth, religion, and philosophy. Sisyphus reflects his persistent exploration of the human struggle on an epic scale. It was commissioned as part of the Honors Program, which recognizes visual artists who have made significant contributions to our region through the sustained production of high-quality artwork.
Primarily an oil painter, Anderson (1906 – 1998) was born in Edmonds, WA, and lived in the area for most of his life. He was one of the four defining artists at the core of the Northwest Mystics—along with Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves, and Mark Tobey—who won national attention following a September 1953 profile in LIFE magazine.
Early in his career, Anderson studied with Seattle painter Eustace Ziegler, who taught him to draw the human form and introduced him to the figurative work of Michelangelo, which remained a lifelong influence for Anderson. A Tiffany Foundation scholarship took him to New York in 1929, where he was able to view works by European masters for the first time. He returned to the Northwest to paint and in 1936 the Seattle Art Museum, which had opened three years earlier, mounted his first solo show. In 1939, Anderson moved to Spokane and worked with Carl Morris, Hilda Deutsch, and Clyfford Still as part of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. He returned to Seattle in 1941, ultimately settling in La Conner, WA, for a romantic, rural life.