Exhibition

School of Visual Arts presents “Marshall Arisman: An Artist’s Journey From Dark to Light, 1972-2017,” an exhibition curated by Francis Di Tommaso spanning the legendary artist's 45-year career. The multi-media retrospective, featuring paintings, sculptures, etchings, editorial illustrations and short films, is on view from August 19 through September 16 at the SVA Chelsea Gallery, 601 West 26th Street, 15th floor, New York City.

The works in “An Artist’s Journey from Dark to Light” reflect Arisman’s embrace of both good and evil, a perspective shaped early on by his grandmother, a psychic and medium who advised him to live his life “in the space between angels and demons.” Included are pen-and-ink drawings of firing-squad executions, suicides and portraits of villains both real (Adolf Hitler, for U.S. News & World Report) and fictional (Darth Vader, for TIME, and Hannibal Lecter, for numerous outlets), as well as examples of Arisman’s fine art, which gravitated toward more enlightened themes, particularly in recent years. Paintings of sacred animals including monkeys, cats and aura-bearing buffalo will be on display, as well as SVA's subway posters based upon his series of Angels and Demons. The 2014 posters were released as part of the College’s long-running SVA Subway Series.

Marshall Arisman's paintings are in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art Print Collection, the New-York Historical Society, the National Gallery of Art, The Guandong Museum of Contemporary Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Arisman's work has appeared regularly in such publications as Esquire, Harper's, Omni, Playboy, The New York Times, Rolling Stone and The Nation, creating an enduring iconoclastic presence in contemporary visual communications. As the chair of SVA’s MFA program Illustration as Visual Essay, Arisman continues to inspire future generations of artists to use mysticism as a tool to make sense of the world around them and create impactful stories in the process.

Marshall Arisman was the subject of the 2023 documentary “Unlocking the Creative Self” by director Nada Ray. Much of the filming occurred during Arisman's 2017 retrospective at the SVA Chelsea Gallery. In it, Arisman walks viewers through a visual journey of his life and work and shares his advice for artists.