Tag: Italian-American-Art

Exhibition Opening on 10.29: Edward E. Boccia: Postwar American Expressionist

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Boccia

Boccia

Edward E. Boccia: Postwar American Expressionist

EXHIBITION OPENING

Tuesday, October 29, 2024, 6pm

Curated by Rosa Berland

A selection of paintings, drawings, and never-before-seen journals by the artist Edward E. Boccia (1921–2012) is on view for the first time in New York City at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute. Throughout his long yet under-recognized career, Boccia developed a new genre of contemporary monumental panel painting that functioned as devotional art while raising questions about ethical, philosophical, and stylistic problems in twentieth-century America. An imaginative and technically gifted artist greatly influenced by Max Beckmann and Philip Guston, Boccia produced work that expressed the crisis of morality experienced in the US in the face of war and consumerism. His bold paintings speak of desire, loss, and spirituality and provide a fresh perspective on what constitutes Italian American modernism. For more than thirty years, Boccia served as a professor of fine arts at Washington University, where he fostered generations of studio artists, thereby changing the landscape of American painting.

Exhibition curator Rosa Berland notes: “By reintroducing the visitor to Boccia’s experimental work, this exhibition seeks to create new dialogue around the diasporic practice of this important and accomplished Italian American artist.”

ON VIEW October 29, 2024–February 21, 2025

Gallery Hours: Monday–Friday, 9am–5pm

EXHIBITION OPENING October 29, 2024, 6pm

Free, open to the public, and held in person at the Calandra Institute.

RSVP by calling (212) 642-2094

Book on Edward Boccia in Contract with Hirmer Verlag

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We are delighted to announce that our book on Italian American artist and poet Edward E. Boccia will be published in Fall 2025 by Hirmer Verlag, Munich. The book will feature tri-folds of the multi-paneled paintings and essays by Rosa JH Berland.

This project would not be possible without the financial support of Ed’s friends, students, colleagues and extended family. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the book production and to all those who continue to support this amazing project which has 503C status via Fractured Atlas.

Please visit our donation page at Fractured Atlas, all donations are tax deductible as per IRS regulations. 

 

About The Artist

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Edward-Boccia, American-Art, American-Painting, Painting, American-Painters, Modern-Art, Contemporary Art, Ed-Boccia, St-Louis-Artist, WUSTL

Edward E. Boccia (1921-2012) was an Italian-American artist active from ca. WW II-2012. Born to Italian parents in Newark Jersey,  Boccia attended the Newark School of Fine Arts. He studied at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League, New York, where he met his wife Madeleine Wysong. Boccia served in World War II, in the covert 603rd Camouflage engineer unit known today as the Ghost Army. He continued to paint and draw during his time overseas, sending his artwork home. After the war, Boccia earned both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree at Columbia University, concurrently serving as Dean and teaching art at the Columbus Art School in Ohio, where he introduced the Bauhaus teaching method to his students.

In 1951, he was appointed Assistant Dean of Fine Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he taught painting for over 30 years, until his retirement in 1986.

 

Boccia was regarded as not only technically gifted, but also singularly independent and deeply dedicated to his craft. Called a Neo-Expressionist, the modern Neo-Renaissance painter and even a Magical Realist, Boccia’s practice was informed by the great masters as well as the work of 20th century modernists such as Max Beckmann and Oskar Kokoschka.

What makes Boccia unique, however is his creation of a unique pictorial language that synthesized the mid to late 20th century experience with motifs and themes from Catholicism, literary criticism, the politics of anti-materialism and the importance of craft. In addition to teaching, the artist spent countless solitary hours working on his large-scale triptych panel paintings, seeking neither official approval or an end to his exploration and experimentation, the artist painted into his eighties. A favorite artist of the important American art collector, Morton D. May, Boccia’s art is owned by over 600 private collectors and within the public collections of national museums and institutions such as the National Painting Gallery of Greece, Athens, The Mildred Lane Kemper Museum of Art, St. Louis, The St. Louis University Museum of Art and many others.