When Mauricio Lasansky retired from the University of Iowa in 1985, he says he did so because he wanted his 70s to be "for me."

Lucky for art lovers, a good portion of his 80s has been for him as well. The world-renowned printmaker, now 85, continues to work almost daily in his studio in downtown Iowa City.

The man largely responsible for establishing the University of Iowa's printmaking department as the world's finest has been named the latest recipient of tis state's most prestigious honor for citizenship, the Iowa Award.

Mauricio Lasansky, Iowa City resident and professor emeritus of art and art history at UI, is scheduled to receive the award at 5:30 p.m. today in a ceremony at the Old Capital on the Pentacrest.

The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art staff doesn't have to second guess how Mauricio Lasansky would have displayed his collection.

Unlike most of the artists represented in the museum's galleries, Lasansky is here to show them.

The Iowa City artist relishes working with four galleries customed-designed for him. The museum relishes having an internationally known printmaker custom-design his own exhibit.

Rarely does a local gallery offer museum-quality work by an artist who has established a place in art history, but such an exhibition is on view through Dec. 22 at the Eyesound Gallery, 105 N. 50th St.

The newly opened art space is presenting 23 prints by Mauricio Lasansky, who taught printmaking at the University of Iowa from 1945 until retirement in 1984.

CEDAR RAPIDS, IA. - J. Carter Brown does not appear to be a man who impresses easily.

The director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Brown cruises in the world of the very wealthy and the very powerful.

A scion of one of America's oldest moneyed families, he achieved distinction after the most elite of educations, has been knighted by the governments of France, Norway and Spain, and hobnobs with the likes of oil magnate Armand Hammer and philanthropist Paul Mellon.

FOR a printmaker of Mauricio Lasansky's stature and age, 15 images make a niggardly retrospective. But the show, which remains at the State University's Neuberger Museum in Purchase for the winter season, is a kind of trial run — not for the 74-year-old artist but for its curator, Roxanne Sexauer, who is an master's degree candidate in the university's department of visual arts. It comes with the written blessing of another prominent printmaker, Antonio Frasconi, who is a distinguished professor in the department and who, like Mr. Lasansky, was born in Buenos Aires.

IOWA CITY, IA — Mauricio Lasansky's eyes gleam. They are the eyes of a mischief-maker, their gleam always anticipating the quick, knowing smile that says "I've seen something of life."

He sits at his desk in the unpretentious, undistinguished office of a professor in the art building on the University of Iowa campus, knowing full well that just across the way the university's art museum has a permanent display of his works in a room named in his honor.

He leans across the desk, those eyes gleaming, his tight facial features forming that smile, and he says with the still-heavy Spanish accent of his native Argentina:

"The devil knows more when he is an old devil."

Viewing art isn't always a pleasant experience. Sometimes it's disturbing. Profoundly disturbing.

And often disturbance is its intent. Art that takes the Holocaust for its subject matter, for example, isn't meant to be easy on the viewer.

Such is the case with a series of drawings by Mauricio Lasansky on exhibit at the Cheney Cowles Memorial Museum through Nov. 16. Known worldwide as "The Nazi Drawings," they are a visual record of the horror and brutality of the Nazi atrocities against the Jews.

Internationally renowned printmaker Mauricio Lasansky has joined Grant Wood and Marvin Cone in a triumvirate heading the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art's permanent collection.

The retired University of Iowa art professor, with his wife, Emilia, wi1l give the museum more than 230 artworks, including 174 by Lasansky. The Lasanskys' gift was announced Tuesday at a news conference in the museum's Stamats Library.