Education
From 1947–1949 he attended the Otis Art Institute, from 1947 to 1950 he also attended the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, and in 1950 the Chouinard Art Institute.
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John Altoon
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Altoon was a prominent figure in the Los Angeles art scene in the 1950s and 1960s. Exhibitions of his work have been held at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Corcoran Gallery, Washington Doctorate.C, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The Baxter Museum, Pasadena, and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (opened June 2014). Leah Ollman describes his life an 1999 article in Art in America, "With his outsized personality and reckless intensity, John Altoon loomed large in the Los Angeles art scene of the "50s and "60s.
Altoon was diagnosed as schizophrenic in his late 30s and suffered bouts of depression and paranoia.
In the early 1960s he became a patient of Doctor Milton Wexler a prominent psychoanalyst who restored his ability to work and from then until his death became the most productive and stable years in his life. He was "possessed by real demons," Larry Bell remembers.
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Born
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Died
February 8, 1969 (aged 42) -
Nationality
United States