William Anastasi

William Anastasi, born in 1933 in Philadelphia, is considered one of the significant first-generation conceptual artists in the USA. Even his early works from the 1960s addressed the central themes of conceptual art: the theme of tautology, the erasure of boundaries, dematerialization, the integration of chance in the artistic process, and a rigorous focus on the reality of the present moment. In the early 1960s, Anastasi was represented by the Virginia Dwan Gallery in New York, a legendary exhibition space for the New York movements of conceptual art and minimalism, where his contemporaries Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Carl Andre, Robert Smithson, and Barry LeVa also exhibited. Although Anastasi did not achieve the same level of fame as his aforementioned peers, his works are nonetheless exemplary.

Influenced by his intellectual kinship with Marcel Duchamp and the clarity and radicality of John Cage's early works, with whom he shared a close friendship for many years, Anastasi has anticipated many ideas of well-known fellow artists in his concepts. For many artists, including younger generations, Anastasi remains an inspiring figure.

William Anastasi is represented worldwide by three galleries: Thomas Rehbein Galerie, Cologne (Germany), Stalke Galleri, Kirke Sonnerup (Denmark), and Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris (France).

With the third solo exhibition of William Anastasi at the Thomas Rehbein Galerie, a project created this year and several early works will be presented, showcasing Anastasi's sharp and precise intuition along with the central concepts of minimal and conceptual art. The exhibition opens on April 16, 2015, from 6 to 9 PM.

(Miriam Walgate, 2015)

William Anastasi's works are included in numerous private and museum collections, such as the New York collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum, as well as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Art Institute in Los Angeles, the British Museum in London, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, and the Kunstmuseum in Düsseldorf. However, it is only in recent years that his extensive oeuvre has increasingly come back into focus within the art world and is being shown in exhibitions. In 2010, Anastasi was honored with the prestigious John Cage Award.