Lydia Gasman, a former University art history professor, renowned art scholar and historian, passed away Jan. 15 at the age of 84.
Gasman taught at the University for 20 years, from 1981 to 2001. David Summers, a former University professor and a close friend of Gasman, said she was an inspiring teacher, with large classes and many admiring students.
He described her as a "truly brilliant person," and said he believes she was still painting and writing "right up to the end."
Gasman, who painted in a surrealist expressionist style, was an authority on Picasso and the interpretation of his paintings and writings, Summers said.
"She was an absolutely voracious reader ... she pieced together the meaning of his manuscripts through this intellectual historical detective work," he said.
Gasman hailed from Romania and graduated from the University of Bucharest in 1948 with degrees in humanities and law. She then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Romania and gained acclaim as a skilled painter.
Despite her success, Gasman was dissatisfied with her life in a communist state and fled to Israel, then later moved to Paris and finally to New York, Summers said.
"As far as she was concerned, her life began after she left Romania," he said.
In New York, she earned both her master's and doctorate from Columbia University. Gasman went on to teach art history at Vassar College from 1968 to 1972 and then at University of Haifa, Israel from 1972 to 1975.
Admirers remembered Gasman in a memorial service in Charlottesville last Friday, which doubled as an exhibition of both her and Summers' work. The exhibition, Summers said, was planned before her death.
-compiled by Bethel Habte
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