Alan Gussow; Painter, Author and Environmentalist

Alan Gussow, 65, artist and environmentalist who created “shadow paintings” as a form of protest. Gussow paired his love of art with that of nature and added an abstract style to realistic landscapes. Also a teacher and author, Gussow published his first book, “A Sense of Place: The Artist and the American Land” in 1972 about the work of American landscape painters. His last book, published last year and concerning environmental preservation, was “The Artist as Native: Reinventing Regionalism.” Born in New York and educated at Middlebury College, he studied painting at the American Academy in Rome after winning the Prix de Rome fellowship. At 21, he was the youngest person to earn the prize. After he returned home to paint scenes of northeastern America, the prolific Gussow staged his first one-man show in 1962. Always an activist, he headed the Friends of the Earth Foundation and the America the Beautiful Fund. Gussow conceived the international Shadow Project in 1985 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. He led other artists in painting sidewalks with outlines of people, representing the shadows etched in pavement by the bomb. The artists stenciled the images with ecologically friendly washable latex in 400 cities. In 1990, Gussow created the Mushroom Project to compare the Hiroshima bombing to peacetime elimination of plants and animals. Gussow helped found and taught in the fine arts program at the Parsons School of Design, and taught briefly at UC Santa Cruz. On Monday in Piermont, N.Y., of cancer.