Walter Askin

Walter Askin was an American painter, printmaker, sculptor, and professor from Pasadena, California. He studied sculpture, painting, and printmaking at the Pasadena City College and studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his BA and MA degrees as a Calmerton Scholar in Art. He continued graduate work at Oxford where he helped start the Museum of Modern Art (now Modern Art Oxford). His first one-person show was at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco while he worked as assistant curator at the Legion of Honor.

Askin began his lengthy teaching career at the California State University, Los Angeles in 1956, where he became professor of art. He was also a visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley; California State University, Long Beach; and University of Hawaii. He served on the board of trustees of Pasadena Art Museum and Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, as the artist representative to the Graphics Arts Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and on the board of governors for Baxter Art Gallery at California Institute of Technology. He was an adjunct professor in the Visual Arts Research Institute at Arizona State University and twice an invited artist at the Tamarind Institute at the University of New Mexico.

Askin was a member of the College Art Association of America and was president of the Los Angeles Printmaking Society. He was honored with many awards for his teaching and his art. His work is in the collections of the Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Kunstlerhaus, Vienna; the Modern Art Oxford, England; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the National Gallery, Washington, DC; the Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena, California, among many others.