George Washington Hall Jr.

George Washington Hall Jr. was born in 1924 in Los Angeles. His first self-portrait taken in 1936 in Newport Beach, which began 73 years of manipulated self-portraits that grew in complexity as a lifetime of compulsive reading vectored his work. He obsessively drew every day without fail. He was a boyhood national sailing champion in Snowbirds.

He graduated from Yale in the 1945W Class with a bachelor of science degree.

Although he was bound to a corporate life, he was inescapably driven to art.

The first organic sculptural forms he cast in a small foundry he assembled. As he received commissions, the sculptures grew in size, often becoming fountains or civic projects. He built an award-winning sculpture studio in Newport Beach, logistically capable of accommodating massive sculptures.

He chose to move to Aspen in 1974 because it was a real town he knew well, and could not be duplicated anywhere. He was basically a hopeful man and so were many of the 200 permanent residents. They chose to be in Aspen because of the skiing, fly fishing, tennis, etc.

He built a new award winning hermitage/studio down on the Roaring Fork River. For 30 years he made sculptural heads, crystalline sculptures, and photographic works.

In 2000, he and his son, launched http://www.artgalleryaspen.com as a showcase of his political paintings. He was still skiing at 80, and playing serve-and-volley tennis at 83. He died peacefully in his third hermitage on the North Fork of the Gunnison River near Paonia. He is survived by his son, George Washington Hall III, daughter-in-law Devon Van Dusen, and daughters Lisa Roelle, and Lori Fulton.

Please join us for an informal gathering on Sunday, May 30 from 2-5 p.m. for a smattering of his life’s work and to reminisce, at 17 Highway 133, Hotchkiss, Colo. (970) 361-2316.