Malcolm Haynie Myers

Malcolm H. Myers was born in 1917, in Chillicothe, Missouri and settled in Wichita, Kansas in the 1930’s. Thanks to the patronage of a family friend, Myers graduated in 1940 from Wichita State University for Art, under Clayton Staples. He then enrolled at the University of Iowa earning a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Watercolor.

In WW II he joined the US Merchant Marine attending Officers School in New York. While there he explored his blossoming love of Jazz music – a music that would influence his work greatly. Meanwhile, Myers married his Kansas sweetheart Roberta King and after the war they stayed on in New York, but eventually returned to the University of Iowa. At Iowa, he taught alongside Argentinean Print Master Mauricio Lasansky for two years becoming a master printmaker himself, earning a second MFA.

Then, in 1948, H. Harvard Arnason (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis) came to Iowa City, recruiting people to teach art at the University of Minnesota. Myers moved and subsequently formed the U of MN Printmaking Department, the Arts B.F.A. Program and Graduate Program.

Myers received two Guggenheim Fellowships. In 1950-51 Paris, he worked at Bill Hayter’s iconic studio, Atelier 17 – collaborating with Joan Miró and Enrique Zarnatu. Myers’ second Guggenheim Fellowship, in 1954, was in Mexico City where he met Diego Rivera and collaborated with Rufino Tamayo.

For Myers, the 1960-80’s were decades of much travel, including multiple stints in New York City. He retired in the 1990’s (becoming Professor Emeritus). However, he never stopped teaching and along the way influenced 60 years of new American artists and printmakers, until his death, at 84, in March of 2002.

During his career Myers mastered 3 disciplines: Painting, Watercolor and Intaglio/Printmaking. He is considered one of the top masters of American Printmaking. His subjects and art series include Abstracts, Animals, Circuses & Clowns, Jazz Music, The Wild West and Don Quixote.

Submitted by Rubine Red Gallery