Henry C. Pearson

Henry C. Pearson was an American abstract and modernist painter. Pearson was born in Kinston, North Carolina, graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1938, and studied theatrical design at Yale University. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in the Second World War, designing maps for the Okinawa campaign, and then re-enlisted to serve in the US occupation of Japan, where he was influenced by Japanese art and theatre forms. Moving to New York in the early 1950s, he studied at the Art Students League of New York with Reginald Marsh and Will Barnet; he remained friends with Barnet for the remainder of his life. Pearson was loosely associated with the Op Art movement and the famous Responsive Eye exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965. Other influences were Piet Mondrian and Kasimir Malevich.