Henry Neil Rasmussen was born in Salt Lake City in 1909.  A modernist painter, his work was exhibited locally and nationally.  He was also the author of several books on painting technique and design.  He died in 1970.

Rasmussen studied at the Art Institute of Chicago (1930) and at the American Academy of Art inn Chicago.  He taught Utah’s Art Barn and at the Utah Art Center (1935–41), the University of Texas (1943–51), the Houston Museum Art School (summer 1950), and at the Paltri School of Art Fundamentals in San Francisco (1953–58).  In the late 1950s and 1960s he was a guest professor of painting at the University of Buffalo.  Although he worked with Utah painter and muralist Lynn Fausett on the Barrier Canyon project, he was primarily a modernist painter.  Examples of his work include Allegory of War (1943), Fish and Sails (1947), and Still Life with Fish, Fork and Spoon (1947).

Rasmussen’s worked was exhibited at the Utah State Fair in 1937, at the World’s Fair in New York in 1939, and at the Denver Art Museum in 1940.  Brigham Young University owns Rasmussen’s studio collection.

Biographical information on this page was adapted from Artists of Utah.