Roland PETERSEN
1926, Denmark/USA

A painter and art professor at the University of California, Davis, from 1956 to 1991, Roland Petersen has earned a prestigious reputation as one of California's leading contemporary artists. His richly colored acrylic genre, interiors, and cityscape pieces, often in series, are a combination of realism and interlocking geometric shapes.

"But best known among the subjects Petersen explored over the years are the PICNIC series that began in 1959 and continue today. The tell-tale elements of Petersen's work can be traced back to their beginning: strong use of color, contrast of light and shadow, and the integration of still life, figure, and landscape" (Roland Petersen by Laura Weir Hill and Scott Hill).

Petersen was born in Endelave, Denmark, and in 1949 earned a B.A. Degree and in 1950 an M.A. Degree from the University of California at Berkeley. He studied painting at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in Provincetown, Massachusetts in the summers of 1950 and 1951 and studied etching and color printing at the Stanley William Hayter Atelier in Paris in 1950, 1963 and 1971. He also studied ceramics in 1954 at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, and photography in 1951 and 1952 at the California School of Fine Arts in Oakland. He lives in Dillon Beach, California.

Selected exhibitions include the Oakland Art Museum, 1954, Crocker Art Museum in 1965, Phoenix Art Museum in 1972, University of Reading, England in 1977 and numerous gallery exhibitions in San Francisco between 1978 and 1993.

Source: http://www.spaniermanmodern.com/inventory/P/Roland-Petersen/roland-petersen_BIO.htm