William Anastasi is an important exponent of American Conceptual Art and Minimal Art, he studied in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania before moving to New York in 1962. In 1965 he met John Cage and was impressed by his musical theories, and the component of sound became a frequent presence in his works. Starting in 1963 he analyzed the relationship between sound, time and the unconscious in his Blind Drawings, works made with the eyes closed, letting the movements of the pencil on paper be guided by music. The result of the operation is a drawing with an essential form, rendered forcefully dynamic by the graphic sign.
A great admirer of Duchamp, Anastasi often builds on his work, especially in terms of the random factors that intervene in the artistic operation. This theme recurs frequently in Anastasi’s works, as in the case of the Subway Drawings made by allowing the arm and the pencil to be freely shaken by the movements of the subway, tracing a continuous, fluid line on a blank sheet of paper. The drawing becomes the visual translation of the perception of that particular movement. The automatic creation of the drawing caused by the movement of the body is also a factor in the Walking Drawings, produced by the motion of the artist in space, and the Pocket Drawings, created by rubbing a small pencil against a piece of paper placed in the artist’s pocket. For Anastasi the graphic sign becomes the imprint and memory of the movement of his own body.
The idea of the drawing created through mnemonic automatism appears in the Donald Ducks, shown in his first exhibition in 1964 at Washington Square Park in New York. Because as a child the artist always drew Donald Duck, this became the most automatic thing he could depict. The subject is placed against backgrounds of different kinds, which are often also made with some degree of randomness.
In 1981 he made his first work in which the word “Jew” appears, a word charged with historical and cultural meaning. Anastasi inserts it in the work painting it on its own, on a neutral background, or overlaid with other subjects such as his photographic self-portrait – though he was raised as a Catholic – or the figure of Christ.
The insertion of the word in the work of art is also found in the Bababad series begun in 1986 and based on a neologism of 100 letters that appears on the first page of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. This unpronounceable word is the sound of the divine thunder that marks the fall of man from paradise and his descent into hell. Every canvas in the series contains a small portion, painted with lively colors applied in a partially random way. During his career Anastasi has worked in various media, making many different types of pieces: paintings, sculptures, photographs, sound works, installations, architectural works, works on the body, films, performances, linguistic and literary works.
His works are included in the collections of the most important museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of New York, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the National Gallery of Art of Washington and the Art Institute of Chicago.
He has had exhibitions in many international museums and institutions, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Castello di Rivoli in Turin, Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Lives and works in New York.