RICHARD NELSON
Painter, Teacher, 1904-1972

Education and Teaching
Studied at University of California, Berkeley, 1946-1947; California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco, 1948-1950; Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris, 1951-1952; University of Guadalajara, Mexico, 1953-1954. Taught at Carnegie Institute of Technology and the Cedar Educational Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1962-1966. Visiting artist at California State College, Los Angeles. Graphic film consultant at University of Southern California, 1966-1969.

Selected Group Exhibitions 1945-1975
69th Annual Painting and Sculpture Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association (from 1961, The San Francisco Art Institute) at the San Francisco Museum of Art, 1950; 78th Annual, 1959; Richmond Art Center, California, 1958; Kingsley Art Club, E.B. Crocker Art Gallery, Sacramento, 1959; The Art Bank of the San Francisco Art Association, 1958-1960, 1962-1964, 1966.

Biography
From 1927 to 1933, Nelson studied at the Chicago Art Institute. In 1942, at the age of forty-one, he enlisted as a private in the Army Engineer Corps and attained the rank of captain. At the conclusion of the war, he decided to remain in Europe to study painting at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.

In summer 1946 Nelson returned to the United States to study with Reginald Marsh at Mills College, and to enter UCB, earning the A.B. and M.A. during the following two years. While at Berkeley, he studied with such outstanding teachers as Earle Loran, James McCray, Chiura Obata, Margaret, O'Hagan, Worth Ryder, and Glenn Wessels. In 1952, Nelson became a member UC Davis Department of Philosophy and Fine Arts and later the founding chairman of the Department of Art.

An imaginative and sensitive painter, Professor Nelson exhibited his paintings in over one hundred museum and gallery exhibitions in the United States and Canada and was awarded prizes from the San Francisco Art Association (1950), The San Francisco Museum of Art (1953), the Crocker Museum (1953), and the Oakland Museum (1954).