Burton Wasserman, 87, artist and longtime Rowan professor

Burton Wasserman, 87, of Glassboro, an artist who taught at Rowan University for more than four decades, died Wednesday, Feb. 8, in hospice care at Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Stratford.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., to Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Poland, Dr. Wasserman developed his love of art through art classes, his son said. He graduated in 1950 from Brooklyn College, where he studied painting with Ad Reinhardt and Burgoyne Diller, and met his future wife, Sarah Masher.

After serving in the Army from 1951 to 1953, Dr. Wasserman taught art classes at a middle school and a high school on Long Island while pursuing his art education doctorate from Columbia University, which he received in 1956.

Dr. Wasserman's love of art — and his desire to share that love with the world — led him to apply for teaching jobs at colleges. He had no ties to South Jersey or the region, but jumped at the chance when Glassboro State College, which would become Rowan, offered him a job.

"We started a whole new life together. I was 3. It was a whole new life," said his son, Marc. "He never left. He loved it, and he identified with South Jersey."

Dr. Wasserman began teaching at Glassboro in January 1960 and kept going for 44 years, formally retiring in December 2004. Even after retirement, his son recalled, Dr. Wasserman continued to teach at Rowan.

"Dr. Burton Wasserman was a central figure in the development of the department of art, beginning in 1960 until his retirement," Daniel Chard, a retired Rowan art professor, wrote in a statement.

"He was also an important voice in the Philadelphia art scene," Chard wrote, and his courses were  "very popular and entertaining."

An abstract artist, Dr. Wasserman had exhibits across the region showcasing the geometric forms he loved. A three-dimensional 1972 work with gray enamel shapes on wood is in the Contemporary Art collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

"He felt it was his way of interpreting things around him because, as an artist, it was how he saw and how he felt and how he saw the world," Dr. Wasserman's son recalled. "He wasn't one to re-create the camera."

When Dr. Wasserman organized a 1996 show at Ursinus College of regional abstract artists, Inquirer art critic Victoria Donohoe described his work as using "rigorous rectangular geometry and often deep, resonant color. These small paintings and relief-constructions seem reticent, full-bodied, plain and succinct, not to say inelegant, in their sense of design and color."

Dr. Wasserman loved to teach, his son said. He wrote five books and hundreds of critiques, articles, and essays.

"The way my dad put it, he got paid to talk about the thing he loved the most," Marc Wasserman said. "He loved to talk about his favorite topic, which was art."

In addition to his wife and son, Dr. Wasserman is survived by a sister, a granddaughter, three nieces, and two nephews.

A remembrance ceremony will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19, at Temple Har Zion, 255 High St., Mount Holly. Interment in Clarksboro will be private.