William Anastasi

William Anastasi (1933–2023) was an American artist considered a pioneer of Conceptual and Minimal art. Born in Philadelphia, he moved to New York in the early 1960s. There his interest in Marcel Duchamp's theoretical approach to art making deepened, a lasting passion he later explored in his essay Duchamp on the Jarry Road (Artforum, 1991). From the early 1960s he pursued an analytical, self-reflexive practice across many media. In the 1960s he was invited to show at important New York galleries such as those of Betty Parsons, Virginia Dwan and Paul Cooper; his Dwan Gallery exhibitions included Sound Objects (1966), Six Sites (1967) and Three Conic Sections and Continuum (1970). As seen in his Subway Drawings, made while riding the New York subway with his eyes closed, and in his site-specific installations and sound works, Anastasi's interests lay in meditation and everyday experience rather than in making aesthetically beautiful objects. Like his friend and peer John Cage, with whom he collaborated on the performance You Are in 1978, he explored the relationship between the human condition and its recording mechanisms. The literature of James Joyce and Alfred Jarry ran through his work, from the Bababad paintings he began in 1984 to his later blind drawings. In 2010 Anastasi received the John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. His works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Art Institute of Chicago. Anastasi lived and worked in New York, where he died on 26 November 2023 at the age of 90. Since his death, Galerie Jocelyn Wolff has presented William Anastasi (1933–2023). This Is Not My Signature in Romainville (2024), with an accompanying monograph edited by Erik Verhagen (Mousse Publishing, 2024), and a solo exhibition in Paris (2026). His work was also included in Dessins sans limite, a presentation of drawings from the Centre Pompidou collection at the Grand Palais, Paris (2025).