William Dutterer

William S. Dutterer was an important Washington artist who moved to New York City in 1979 and continued to make powerful and innovative paintings until his death in January 2007. His 40 year career exhibits Dutterer’s passion, humor, and sharp observation of humanity’s response to an increasingly unstable world. Dutterer developed his own, idiosyncratic visual vocabulary that often referenced masks (or, interchangeably, the face), wrapped objects (a mummy or a bound head), and the concept of the bystander (a witness so close as to be a possible victim of irrational acts) from his minimalist work of the ‘60s. His work engages the viewer, encouraging us to consider the impact our culture and world events have on the way we see ourselves and allow others to see us.

Dutterer was born in Hagerstown, Maryland in 1943. His true roots, however, were in Pocahontas, West Virginia. He attended the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. After earning a Master of Fine Arts from MICA in 1968, he moved to Washington, D. C. and began teaching painting at the Corcoran School of Art, where he continued to teach until 1986.

Dutterer’s work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the American University Museum, the Avampato Discovery Museum (Charleston, West Virginia) and numerous other public and private collections. He has shown his work in public institutions including The Corcoran Gallery of Art (“34th Biennial Exhibition”), the Kunstalle Dusseldorf, Germany, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Instituto Guatemalteco Americana, the Kennedy Center and One Penn Plaza. He has shown in private galleries including the Pyramid, Osuna, Henri, Jack Rasmussen and Franz Bader Galleries in Washington, D. C., the Susan Caldwell, Frank Marino and Portico Galleries in New York City as well as galleries in cities throughout the U.S.