William Wiley (1937-2021)

Always wildly original, William Wiley combined mythic and cultural images, philosophy, commentary, and wit in his art. Here, for this complex woodblock print, he brought together a wide assortment of objects which likely held symbolic meaning for him. A woodblock print is created by every color and line first being carved in separate woodblocks, then, with careful registration, each individual print is pressed with each block to complete the composition. For this remarkable print, Wiley traveled to Japan to work with master woodblock print maker Tadashi Toda.

In high school in the 1950s, one imaginative teacher inspired three of his students: Wiley and his friends Robert Hudson and William Allen, who all became nationally celebrated, highly unconventional artists. Wiley won a full scholarship to the California School of Fine Arts where he earned a BA and, in 1962, an MFA. He had his first solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1960. In 1983, he joined the faculty of the University of California, Davis, where he taught with other renowned artists. His many solo exhibitions were featured in national museums, and the Venice Biennial. Today, his work is in major museum collections, among them, the Whitney Museum, the New York and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Wiley raised his family in Marin County and often spent time in Stinson Beach and in Bolinas. He eventually settled in the San Geronimo Valley, West Marin.