Jerry Rudquist, who began teaching art at Macalester in 1958, died of brain cancer last Sunday at the age of 67. He passed away in his home. Rudquist retired last year, but stayed in the department as artist-in-residence.
The funeral took place on Nov. 19 at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. There will be a memorial service on campus at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 20, in Weyerhauser Chapel.
Rudquist showed his paintings all over the world, including New York, Finland, Germany, Papua New Guinea and the Minnesota State Fair. In 1997, a painting of a hog named “Petunia” won the People's Choice Award at the fair. Afterwards, he painted “After the Fair, which depicted a pork chop suspended by a cord.
“He got a lot of criticsm about that pork chop painting from people who thought it was insensitive, but he was just being a realist,” Monica Rudquist, his daughter, told the Star Tribune.
Rudquist was also known for his “Must We Always Expect War” series of paintings. The anti-war paintings of skulls spanned 40 years of U.S. military conflicts. During the Gulf War he painted skulls in colors representing the landscapes and flags of the warring nations.
Rudquist graduated from what is now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and received his master's degree in fine arts from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
Anthony Caponi, a former head of the art department who hired Rudquist, said, “I hired him when he was a very young man, 24 and just out of Cranbrook. I saw in him everything I was looking for, and he turned out to be everything I hoped he would be.”
Rudquist is survived by his wife, Raquel, and daughters Monica and Michelle; a brother, John; and two grandchildren.
