Larry Schulte (b. 1949)
Larry Schulte was born in Kearney, Nebraska in 1949 and was raised on
a farm near Pleasanton. He received his BS in Math, BA in Art, and MS in
Art Education all from Kearney State College and went on to get his PhD
from the University of Kansas. Schulte was a former teacher and worked as
Assistant to the Dean at the Parsons School of Design in New York City and
has spent the past ten years as a full time studio artist in New York City.
His work is based on a mathematical grid derived from the Fibonacci Sequence,
a numerical progression in which each number is the sum of the two that
precede it. Schulte's work resembles that of Mondrian and Kandinsky and
he considers himself to be a visual mathematician, "My work is about
mathematical structure. It is based on creating visual order. Throughout
the past twenty years, I have tried to invent ways to interpret mathematical
concepts visually."
"My work has developed out of a love of nature and a love of mathematics.
Its shapes, colors and forms have been derived from realistic landscape
painting to a personal abstraction of nature. Additionally, I have worked
within grids based on the Fibonacci Sequence, which is a mathematical basis
of structure found in nature. Thus, I am combining the shapes, colors and
forms of nature with a mathematical underpinning of the structure of nature."
"This mathematical sequence also reflects man's intuitive view of ratios
of beauty, being closely tied to the "Golden Mean" that the Greeks
found to be the ratio of beauty. The result is a personal view of the beauty
of nature and the structure of nature. It is another example of man choosing
to view his world as structured, and thus manageable, rather than random
and chaotic."
Curriculum
