Ed Emshwiller

After majoring in painting and illustration at the University of Michigan, Ed Emshwiller studied in Paris at the École des Beaux Arts and NYC's Art Students League. An abstract expressionist, he was also a major science fiction illustrator during the 1950s and 1960s, winning Hugo Awards for his imaginative paperback and magazine covers. Active in the New American Cinema movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, he created multimedia performance pieces, cine-dance and experimental films, while also filming documentaries and low-budget features. After a period as artist-in-residence at the Television Laboratory WNET/13 (New York), he moved to California in 1984, serving as Dean of the School of Film and Video at the California Institute of the Arts. Emshwiller's works are in the Museum of Modern Art, while his files, correspondence, notebooks and stills are kept at the American Film Institute Library.