Innovative Iowa printmaker Lasansky dies at 97

Mauricio Lasansky, an innovative printmaker known for The Nazi Drawings, has died at his home in Iowa City at the age of 97, his son said Tuesday.

Phillip Lasansky said his father died Monday of "old age and just faded away."

Lasansky was born in Argentina in 1914 and came to the United States on a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1943. He spent a year studying at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, then in 1945 he accepted a teaching job at the University of Iowa.

At Iowa, Lasansky succeeded artist Grant Wood and established a printmaking department that quickly gained international attention. Lasansky remained the head of the department until he retired in the mid-1980s.

Lasansky was best known for large-scale prints where he used multiple plates and a full range of colors. The Nazi Drawings examine the horror of Nazi Germany.

Phillip Lasansky said his father was always developing different techniques for his art.

"He was always pushing the envelope and developing different techniques and trying different things, trying to see how far he could push the median essentially to different levels," his son said.

Lasansky and a group of students at the University of Iowa questioned the limitations of printmaking and sought to create prints on a large scale. Some of his prints are 4 feet by 8 feet and contain multiple plates, not just one or two, Phillip Lasansky said.

"He was making these prints that were like jigsaw puzzles that had 55-60 plates in them. That's a lot of what he became famous for," his son said.

Lasansky said his father was known as an artist and an educator.

"His work is in just about every major museum in this country and in Europe," his son said. "But he was equally recognized an educator who developed this whole thing."

A telephone message left for University of Iowa spokesman Tom Moore was not returned Tuesday evening.

His son says a private funeral is planned in Iowa City.