THE LIFE & LEGACY OF ARTIST ERIC BRANSBY (1916-2003)
By Victoria Chick
I met Eric Bransby in 1965, his first year as Asst. Professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. As a second-year transfer student to the Art Department, I learned the tall, thin man with the goatee was scheduled to teach life drawing and I was scheduled for his class. Bransby turned out to be a great instructor in teaching a variety of ways to see the human form and a linear way to describe its surface. He loved bones. His own work was peopled with thin, structural figures overlaid with muscle and with an emphasis on articulated joints so his figures in action were believable even if, at times, exaggerated. He had us study anatomy from the musculoskeletal standpoint of an artist.
Eric Bransby was already well-known as a muralist. He had studied at the Kansas City Art Institute during the time that muralist Thomas Hart Benton was an instructor there. Bransby met his wife, Maryann, while they were both students at the KC Art Institute. Bransby’s young daughter developed asthma, so the family moved to Colorado for its cleaner air and both Bransbys continued studies at the Colorado Springs Art Center whose Chair was Boardman Robinson, a muralist whose work is in Rockefeller Center, and Washington D.C.
At Colorado Springs he met Jean Charlot, a muralist who worked in Mexico and the United States, and who assisted Bransby in doing his thesis mural, a domed ceiling at Colorado College. Bransby also apprenticed for a short period of time to David Siqueros, the Mexican social realist. In 1952 he went to Yale to study color theory with Josef Albers who had done murals in Germany. So it can be seen his early contacts with well-known artists working in the public mural genre were important to his later career.
Eric Bransby’s most well-known mural was commissioned by the Air Force Planetarium and dedicated in 1968. “The History of Navigation”, 30 feet in length, was placed at the Air Force Academy, and later loaned to Colorado Springs Fine Art Center where it can still be viewed. The mural was completed the year prior to the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
Murals are designed to fit into architecture and, in the past, were always painted directly on walls. The drawback to direct wall painting is that sometimes buildings get demolished, and the muralist’s art is lost. Bransby solved that problem by designing for the architectural setting but painted on panels that could be removed, enjoyed, and studied elsewhere.
Those wanting to see Eric Bransby murals have choices because he completed commissions in many states: Kansas State University in Manhattan, KS, St. Paul Lutheran Church and Academy in Skokie Ill., in Colorado, at the above-mentioned Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, one can see Bransby’s fresco work at the building entrance as well as viewing “The History of Navigation”.
During his twenty years of residence teaching at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, Bransby completed murals in that region too. In 1981, he won a 5 State competition to design and execute a 10-panel mural for the Council Chambers of the Liberty, Missouri City Hall (pictured). Park College in Parkville, Mo. has a Bransby Mural in their McAffee Memorial Library.
Eric Bransby lived a rich life of 103 years. His accomplishments were recognized often. Bransby was presented the Veatch Award in 1977 for Distinguished Research and Creative Activity from the University of Missouri at Kansas City. The University of Colorado honored him with a Doctorate of Humane Letters in 1997 and in 1998 the Colorado College Alumni Association gave him a medal for Lifetime Achievement. He was an outstanding artist and a wonderful teacher, always generous with his time and knowledge. He was still teaching private students until he was 100 years old.
Special thanks to the City of Liberty, Missouri for the image of Eric Bransby’s mural in their Council Chambers. More about Liberty, Missouri and their murals at: https://www.libertymissouri.gov/
Victoria Chick is the founder of the Cow Trail Art Studio in southwest New Mexico. She received a B.A. in Art from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and was awarded an M.F.A. in Painting from Kent State University in Ohio. Visit her website at www.ArtistVictoriaChick.com
