The School of Visual Arts lost one of its most beloved and influential figures late last week when artist, illustrator, author and filmmaker Marshall Arisman, founder and chair of the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program and longtime College faculty member, died suddenly of heart failure.

Arisman joined the SVA faculty in 1964. Three years later he was named chair of Design and Illustration. In 1970, as the College transitioned to offering BFA degrees, he became co-chair, with Richard Wilde, of Media Arts. In 1984, he founded SVA’s MFA illustration department. Then called MFA Illustration as Visual Journalism, it was the College’s second graduate offering, after MFA Fine Arts. Nearly 40 years on, it is one of the most distinguished programs of its kind. Its many notable alumni include MacArthur Fellowship-winning author Lauren Redniss (2000); children’s book creators Brian Floca (2001), Stephen Savage (1996) and Shadra Strickland (2005); and illustrator Yuko Shimizu (2003).

Among his students, Arisman was known for his emphasis on mining one’s own biography to find and develop an individual artistic identity, rather than following the changing dictates and trends of the marketplace.

“The founding principles of the department are to teach illustrators to tell their own stories and to break down the distinction between illustration and fine art,” he said in an interview for the program’s 30th anniversary. “My first assignment is to have students stand up in front of the class one by one and tell a personal story and show an illustration that goes with it, only to prove the point that the stories are more interesting than the illustrations, and to encourage them to start tapping into their own subject matter for inspiration.”

“There’s that ‘aura of Marshall,’” said 2002 program alumnus Nathan Fox, comics artist and chair of MFA Visual Narrative at SVA. “It’s all about ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What’s your voice?’ and ‘How do you solve problems?’”

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The legacy of the artist, longtime SVA faculty member and MFA Illustration as Visual Essay founder and chair