William Berry (artist)

William Augustus Berry (born September 29, 1933, Jacksonville, Texas; died January 3, 2010, Columbia, Missouri) was an author, artist, and professor of art, known for his illustrations and colored pencil drawings. Berry earned a BFA at the University of Texas, Austin in 1955 and an MFA from the University of Southern California in 1957. Subsequently, he worked as an illustrator and painter in New York City. In 1968, Berry began teaching art at the University of Texas, Austin, where he became the first Art Director of Texas Monthly Magazine. While teaching at UT Austin, he wrote his seminal textbook: Drawing The Human Form, a book widely adopted by art departments across the country and cited as "excellent" by art historian Ernst Gombrich. From 1974 to 1978, Berry taught graphic design and illustration at Boston University, School of Visual Arts. In 1978, he became Professor of Art at the University of Missouri in Columbia where he was given the Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Faculty Research and Creative Activity, 1983, and named a William H. Byler Distinguished Professor in 1989. He served as chair for the department from 1995-1999. The University of Missouri, in recognition of his scholarship and professional reputation, made him a Curators’ Professor in 1991. He retired in 1999 as Curators’ Professor of Art Emeritus, a title he held for life. Berry’s artwork has been in over 500 exhibitions, in the U.S. and abroad, receiving over 100 awards and prizes. Among the galleries that showed his work are: the Galleria Schneider, Rome, Italy; the Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, VA; United States Information Agency Gallery, Athens, Greece; Espace Reduit, Cassis, France; and the Charles Campbell Gallery, San Francisco. Berry traveled throughout the Middle East from 1965 to 1966, sponsored by a Dorothy Thompson Fellowship, resulting in an exhibition of photographs, drawings, and paintings shown at various American colleges in 1967-68. These formed the basis of a number of his later political illustrations.