1936 – 2023

Evan Lindquist died on 12/18/23 at age 87. A native of Salina, Kansas, Lindquist taught art at Arkansas State University (ASU) in Jonesboro for 40 years. Evan Lindquist was a renowned printmaker: his works are in the permanent collections of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts; Albertina in Vienna, Austria; Uffizi in Florence, Italy; Dublin City Gallery in Dublin, Ireland; Reina Sophía in Madrid, Spain; Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; San Francisco Art Museum; Art Institute of Chicago; Boston Museum of Fine Arts; New Orleans Museum of Art; St. Louis Art Museum; and the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson.

Lindquist’s prints intertwine highly detailed linear rhythms cut by hand with a burin onto a copper plate. His artistic style has been described by reviewers as calligraphic, satirical, and philosophical, with one reviewer describing them as “metaphors of the mind.” Recurring topics that appear in his works include string theories, labyrinths, academe, portraits, documents, and other themes unusual for twentieth-century artists. In 1995, Lindquist was commissioned by ASU to create a commemorative engraving, titled President and Scholars, presented to President Bill Clinton during the dedication of ASU’s Dean B. Ellis Library that year.

Lindquist launched the Delta National Small Prints exhibition in 1996, a prestigious annual event held at ASU. He was named Arkansas’s first Artist Laureate by Governor Mike Beebe in 2013. He received the Arkansas Governor’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004 and, even after retiring, “continued to be active in the art world, creating prints in his private studio in Jonesboro.”

Martin Schöngauer Engraves St. Anthony (2010 engraving; 8.3 x 10.5 inches) Encyclopedia of Arkansas/courtesy of Evan Lindquist