Alfred (Al) Blaustein (1924–2004) graduated from Cooper Union in 1947, despite a three-year interruption serving in the Air Force during World War II. The following year, Blaustein was sent by LIFE Magazine and the British Oversees Food Corporation to East Africa to record local life. In 1953, Margaret Day Blake and the Skowhegan School faculty invited Blaustein to paint a fresco at the South Solon Meeting House (he had spent the summer of 1946 at the school). Blaustein taught among others at the Albright Art School, the Yale-Norfolk Summer School, Yale University, the Vermont Studio School, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and Pratt Institute (1959–2004). Over the course of his long career, Blaustein received many awards, including the Rome Prize (1954–57), a Guggenheim fellowship in painting (1958) and another in printmaking (1961). Blaustein worked in drawing, painting, and printmaking, creating abstract and expressionistic artworks. Fascinated with textures, he sought to metaphorically convey aspects of the physical world.
—Ari Trueba
- Al Blaustein: The Artist and His Work, 1924–2004.
- Blaustein, Alfred H. “Resident Artist Lecture.” Lecture, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, 1969. Skowhegan Lecture Archive. ArtStor.
- Cummings, Mildred H. South Solon: The Story of a Meeting House. South Solon, Maine: South Solon Historical Society, 1959.
- SAAM (Smithsonian American Art Museum). “Al Blaustein.” Smithsonian American Art Museum. Wikipedia. “Al Blaustein.”