Rooftops

Andrew Rush

Andrew Rush completed his undergraduate studies with printmaker Lee Chesney at the University of Illinois and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with honors in 1953. After serving in the US Marine Corps, Rush studied printmaking with Mauricio Lasansky in the graduate program at the University of Iowa, earning his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1958. That same year he received a Fulbright Grant to study printmaking in Florence, Italy.

Rush was an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Arizona between 1959 and 1969, where he founded the printmaking program; and he was co-director of the Rockefeller Foundation Indian Arts Project between 1960 and 1964. He has been a visiting artist or an artist-in-residence at Ohio State University, the University of Arkansas, and Colorado College.

In 1968, Charles Littler, Hazel Archer, and Rush helped found the arts community of Rancho Linda Visa by converting a defunct dude ranch in Oracle, Arizona. Over fifty years later it is still a thriving arts community.

Rush studied in Italy on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1958, and much of his early work features the architecture there, particularly in Florence, where the inspiration for this image was likely drawn from. The Duomo complex is seen in the distance.