34 Facts About William Utermohlen

William Charles Utermohlen was an American figurative artist known for his late-period self-portraits completed after his diagnosis of probable Alzheimer's disease.

William Utermohlen was diagnosed in 1995, having had progressive memory loss since 1991.

William Utermohlen moved to London in 1962 and married the art historian Patricia Redmond in 1965.

William Utermohlen relocated to Massachusetts in 1972 to teach art at Amherst College before returning to London in 1975.

William Charles Utermohlen was born on December 5,1933, in Southern Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as the only child of first-generation German immigrants.

William Utermohlen's parents did not allow him to venture outside of his immediate surrounding; the art critic Manu Sharma speculates that, by making William Utermohlen look inwards, such protectiveness had an influence on his artistic development.

William Utermohlen earned a scholarship at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1951 where he studied under the realist artist Walter Stuempfig.

William Utermohlen completed his military service in 1953, following two years in the Caribbean.

William Utermohlen graduated from PAFA in 1957 and moved to England, in part because he was attracted to the London art scene.

William Utermohlen moved to London in 1962 where he met Redmond, whom he married in 1965.

William Utermohlen taught art at Amherst College in Massachusetts from 1972, where he spent his last year as an artist-in-residence.

William Utermohlen's art is mainly centered on portraiture, although Utermohlen has made murals at the Royal Free Hospital and at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue.

William Utermohlen experienced memory loss while working on the Conversation series.

William Utermohlen had issues with speech and knowing the time of day.

William Utermohlen rarely depicted himself in the Conversation series, and in one of these few depictions, in Snow, William Utermohlen showed himself as isolated from the group of five people at the table.

William Utermohlen feared Utermohlen was depressed and sought medical advice, where he was diagnosed with probable Alzheimer's disease in August 1995 at the age of 61.

William Utermohlen was sent to the Queen's Square Hospital where a nurse, Ron Isaacs, became interested in his drawings and asked him to start drawing self-portraits.

William Utermohlen had retired from painting by December 2000, could no longer draw in 2002, and was in the care of the Princess Louise nursing home in 2004.

William Utermohlen died of pneumonia at the Hammersmith Hospital on March 21,2007, aged 73.

Redmond covered the mirrors in their house because William Utermohlen was afraid of what he saw there, and had stopped using them for self-portraits.

William Utermohlen noted an emphasis in his forehead that is present within the self-portraits.

Hsu speculates that William Utermohlen created this self portrait to express that he did not want to be known for his struggles with dementia, and wanted to be known as an artist.

The last self portrait that William Utermohlen used a mirror for, Self Portrait uses the same pose as a 1955 self-portrait.

William Utermohlen might have been quite amused by that, I think.

The writer continues that William Utermohlen's portraits offer "a window into the artist's" decline.

William Utermohlen's self-portraits were first reported on as the subject of the June 2001 case report published by The Lancet, and three months later in August an exhibition featuring the works at the Two 10 Gallery in London, and another exhibition in Paris, brought media attention to his self-portraits in the artistic and scientific world.

Crutch said that William Utermohlen's works were "more eloquent than anything he could have said with words".

William Utermohlen wanted his works to be a subject of medical research, willingly engaging in research published by The Lancet, which involved the relationship between the symptoms of the disease and the aesthetics of his work.

William Utermohlen added that they "[brought] the interphase of science and art to a whole new level".

Andrew Purcell stated that William Utermohlen's artwork provided viewers with a "unique glimpse into the effects of a declining brain".

William Utermohlen's paintings were exhibited at the Lee Nordness Gallery in 1968, the Marlborough Gallery in 1969, and in 1972, the Mummers cycle was displayed in Amsterdam.

William Utermohlen's self-portraits had several exhibitions in the years after his death, including 12 exhibitions from 2006 to 2008.

William Utermohlen's self-portraits have been shown in Washington, DC in 2007, the Two 10 Gallery in London in 2001, Harvard University at Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2005, Boston, and Los Angeles.

William Utermohlen's artworks were shown in 2016 at the Kunstmuseum Thun in Switzerland.