William Charles Utermohlen December 5, β March 21, was an American figurative artist known for his late-period self-portraits completed after his diagnosis of probable Alzheimer's disease. He was diagnosed in , having had progressive memory loss since After diagnosis he began a series of self-portraits influenced by both the figurative painter Francis Bacon and cinematographers from the German Expressionism movement.
The last of his self-portraits was completed c. After completing military service, he spent studying in Europe where he was inspired by Renaissance and Baroque artists. He moved to London in and married the art historian Patricia Redmond in He relocated to Massachusetts in to teach art at Amherst College before returning to London in His early work consists of separate six cycles, each of which covers themes and subject matter ranging from mythology to war to nudes.
Most of Utermohlen's life was spent in obscurity. His later works began to attract attention at the beginning of the 21st century. His self-portraits especially are seen as important in the understanding of the gradual effects of neurocognitive disorders , and have become one of the most well-recognised works of art about Alzheimer's. His late paintings have been widely displayed since his story became known in popular medicine literature.
William Charles Utermohlen was born on December 5, , [ 1 ] [ 2 ] in Southern Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , as the only child of first-generation German immigrants. Utermohlen's parents did not allow him to venture outside of his immediate surrounding; the art critic Manu Sharma speculates that, by making Utermohlen look inwards, such protectiveness had an influence on his artistic development. When he came to England he discovered, amazingly, because the English had always been like this, that we quite liked girlish men.
Utermohlen attended the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford between and , while he was on the G. Kitaj , [ 14 ] whose pop art works had influenced Utermohlen. His early works are mostly figurative , [ 24 ] and described by the medical academic James M. Stubenrauch as "exuberant, at times surrealistic" style of expressionism. Examples of this technique include his Self-Portrait Split and two portraits of Redmond.
