Eric Bransby gets the attention he so richly deserves

Colorado Public Radio produced a wonderful piece on artist and local living treasure Eric Bransby.

It aired Saturday on NPR’s Weekend Edition. An extended version will air on CPR stations (in Denver, Boulder and Pueblo) on Wednesday (1/7/15) at 6:51a, 8:51a and 5:50p. The segment will be part of a weekly podcast on cpr.org on Friday. You can see the transcripts and hear the original NPR report here.

Here’s a brief tribute to Bransby and his work by FAC Museum Director and Chief Curator Blake Milteer:

Since the 1940s, Eric Bransby has been among

America

’s most renowned mural painters. Over the course of his esteemed career, Bransby has developed a signature style of traditional Renaissance-based figurative compositions, and has adopted a strong abstract sensibility that allows him to integrate depictions of the human figure with architecturally-based geometric shapes.

As a young artist in the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, Bransby nurtured his skills studying under renowned American artists Thomas Hart Benton and Josef Albers. Of great significance to the Fine Arts Center’s history is that he also studied under master muralists Boardman Robinson and Jean Charlot at the Fine Arts Center School, where he later taught. His association with these artists in the 1940s represents one of our enduring connections to the FAC’s predecessor, the Broadmoor Art Academy.

Bransby became an important muralist and draftsman in his own right, creating permanent works for Kansas State University, the municipal building in Liberty, Missouri, the University of Missouri, Brigham Young University, Colorado College, the Pioneers Museum, and the Air Force Academy among others. In the mid-1980s, Bransby was commissioned to restore the FAC’s badly-damaged façade mural originally painted by Boardman Robinson. Bransby, who still lives and works in Colorado Springs, received the 2007 Pikes Peak Arts Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award. At 98, Bransby continues to create art in his classic realist style and depicts the nobility of human endeavors.

The Fine Arts Center has been privileged to maintain a 70-year relationship with Eric Bransby. The FAC has curated many solo and group exhibitions which included his work, including the major exhibition From Roots to Soaring Visions in 2000-2001, which highlighted both Eric and Mary Ann Bransby’s work. In 1985, Bransby skillfully restored Boardman Robinson’s mural on the FAC facade, and in 2012, he completed a spectacular mural celebrating the FAC’s 75th anniversary. The FAC collection also boasts 1 oil painting, 3 drawings, 4 lithographs, and multiple studies for his 75th anniversary mural. Our painting The Good Book, 1941 is currently on loan to David Cook Gallery, Denver for their exhibition Transcending Figuration: Bransby in Retrospect, which is open through January 31. – FAC Museum Director and Chief Curator Blake Milteer