Date of death: 8/11/2008

Saint Meinrad Class: SPH 1949

George Deem, a painter who admired master painters so much that he spent his own career repainting their works, albeit with clever alterations, died from lung cancer at his home in Manhattan. He was 75.He was born August 18, 1932 in Vincennes, IN, where his father was a cantaloupe farmer. George worked alongside his father until he was 20.As a teenager he began visiting Saint Meinrad monastery, where his cousin, Father Hilary Ottensmeyer, was a Benedictine monk. It was Father Hilary who informed George’s parents, “He doesn’t belong here. He belongs in art school.George spent a year at the Art Institute of Chicago before he was drafted into the Army in 1953. He spent his years in the service in the military police in Heidelberg, Germany, and completed his art degree when he returned.His books include How to Paint a Vermeer: A Painter’s History of Art” (Thames & Hudson, 2004) and “Art School,” a 1993 book reissued in 2005, also by Thames & Hudson. At his death he was preparing a show of his work to be presented at the Pavel Zoubok Gallery in Manhattan in January, 2009.There are no survivors.Information obtained from the New York Times obituaries on Friday, August 22, 2008″””