If you are an alum of the California Institute of the Arts, you have no doubt heard of the Cal Arts Awards. Cal Arts was created in the 1920s to show appreciation for the art form that is California. You might not realize it, but the awards are also the way the school honors the best of the university’s alumni.
I’ve heard of people who were alumni of the California Institute of the Arts, but have no idea what the awards are. To me though, they are one of the most important parts of the school. Just because you went to a college (or any other school) doesn’t mean you are eligible to receive any awards or get your name mentioned in the school’s biographies.
Some of the most famous alumni from this school are painters and photographers, such as John Cage and David Hockney. But there are other well respected artists who have gone on to become well known as well. George Bellows is a well known sculptor who was also a member of the institute. John James Audubon and George Washington are both known for their wildlife paintings. And the California Institute of the Arts is one of the oldest art institutions in the United States.
The California Institute of the Arts is one of the oldest art schools in the United States. It was founded in 1852 and was the first art school in the United States to offer art courses for women. John James Audubon, an American artist, was a member of the institute from 1867 to 1883. George Washington, a portrait painter and military officer, studied painting at the college from 1831 to 1848. David Hockney is another well-known figure at the school.
I could go on and on, but this is just an overview of the history of the institute. Of course, the institute’s alumni include a large number of artists, artists in general, and more specifically, painters.
The school has produced numerous noteworthy painters over the years, often of the American art tradition, and some of the best artists in the world, like Edgar Degas, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and Vincent van Gogh. It’s not an exaggeration to say there’s more than one painter in the world who owes their education to CalArts. And that’s just in the last eighty or so years.
The institutes was founded in 1868 by the Royal Society of Arts, and has the distinction of having its own art museum on campus. It’s a great school that has produced notable professors, professors of painting, and painters, like John Sloan, Robert Henri, and Robert Motherwell. It has also produced artists who have influenced the modern art in the west, like Edgar Degas, Winslow Homer, and John Singer Sargent.
The institute of the arts has a great deal of alumni, a lot more than you might realize. The most notable alumni include Paul Cezanne, a famous painter (and friend of Cezanne) born in Bruges in Belgium; Frank Lloyd Wright, an American architect who designed the Wright brothers’ house in Oak Park, Illinois, where the architect was also born; and Josephine Baker, an American singer famous for her hits “Come Rain or Come Shine”.
There are more prominent artists like Edgar Degas and John Singer Sargent. But the institute of the arts has a strong, international reputation that can be attributed to the caliber of the faculty, many of whom have been teachers at the school of fine arts in New York since the late 1800s.
Though there are some faculty members who are not students of the institute, there are plenty of faculty members who are. The school also has a major library, which has over 3,000 rare books.
