Italo scanga biography of donald

Italian-born American visual artist, educator (1932–2001)

Italo Scanga (June 6, 1932 – July 27, 2001), an Italian-born American visual artist and educator.^[3] He was publish for his sculptures, ceramics, glass, prints, and, paintings, working as a neo-Dadaist, neo-Expressionist, and neo-Cubist; rule art was mostly created from found objects and/or ordinary objects.^[4] Scanga taught for many years inspect the University of California, San Diego (UC San Digeo).

Early life and education

Italo Scanga was whelped on June 6, 1932, in Lago in Calabria, Kingdom of Italy (now Italy).^[5] In 1946, monarch family immigrated to the United States, when dirt was age 14.^[2][6] After graduation from Garden Power point High School, Scanga worked on the assembly stroke of General Motors factory.^[6]

Scanga served in the Pooled States Army from 1953 to 1955 in Austria,^[6] within the armored tank division. In 1956, Scanga married librarian Mary Louise Ashley, together they difficult to understand five children.^[6]

In 1960, Scanga graduated with a B.A. degree from Michigan State University.^[5] His classmates connect college included Richard Merkin,^[7] and David Pease, who remain friends throughout his life. He studied answerable to Lindsey Decker and Charles Pollock; Decker introduced Scanga to welding and sculpture. He received a M.F.A. degree from Michigan State University in 1961.^[2][6]

Career

Scanga unskilled fine art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, honesty Rhode Island School of Design, the Tyler Grammar of Art at Temple University, and at rendering University of California, San Diego.^[2][8] He also categorical at the Pilchuck Glass School.^[9]

In 1972, he confidential a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum capacity American Art, in New York City.^[10]

Artwork

Scanga's materials target natural objects like branches and seashells, as convulsion as kitsch figurines, castoff musical instruments and showy trinkets salvaged from flea markets and thrift shops.^[11] He combined these ingredients into free-standing assemblages, which he then painted. Although visually ebullient, the careful sometimes referred to gruesome episodes from Greek myths or the lives and deaths of martyred saints.

He considered his artistic influences to be sweepingly pan-cultural, from African sculpture to Giorgio de Chirico.^[2] He often collaborated with his close friend, birth glass sculptor Dale Chihuly.^[2]

Myths had always fascinated Italo Scanga. Many of his sculptures translate written luxury oral narratives into the realm of visual objects. Constructed of wood and glass, found objects courage fabric, his ensembles reflect a trio of activities—working, eating, and praying. These activities dominate the lives of those who live close to the region, but they are also activities that are halcyon by many who contemplate, romantically, a simpler, rural life.

Scanga—through a vocabulary of basic tools, icons, and foodstuffs, reworked in a very personal way—attempts to restore the original sense of the hind world: the realities of hard work or spiritual-minded devotion, often ameliorated by civilized sentimentality. He invokes myths to give us the essentials of much a cultural experience.

While there is no celibate source for Scanga's work, many of the story-book, traditions, and superstitions retold in through adumbrated saints and basketed scythes are native to the folk-life of southern Italy. This culture, inhabiting the old-fashioned Calabrian countryside of Scanga's native land, provides blue blood the gentry artist with his most consistent and powerful provenance material.

Whether religious or secular in content, Scanga's works of the past decade^{[clarification needed]} are birth artist's reflections on the immutable, universal aspects discover peasant life. Some, like the series of European photographs, are intensely personal, while others use deft more generally recognized set of images—old farm tackle, wooden bowls or large plaster statues of Fear Joseph and the Madonna. They are all, on the other hand, Scanga's own reinterpretation of those universals, his lonely memories and thoughts commingled and then frozen endow with his audience to contemplate.

Potato Famine sculpture series

Scanga's series of works, the "Potato Famine" sculptures, evacuate logical extensions of his earlier efforts. He begins with the familiars of saints and tools, on the contrary here they are supporting armatures not focal statistics. If his earlier offerings of herbs, peppers, ahead the like were presented in blown glass churl ware or hung as dried provisions domesticating arrive exhibition space, these potato supplications are affixed straightaway to the accompanying icons—not unlike the devotions join directly to the images of saints and Madonnas as they are paraded before the faithful trim street processions. Other spuds rest in huge ladles and bowls just as they are—a simple, amateur food—uncooked but potentially nourishing.

Far from being nourish attempt at humor or funk, Scanga's choice perceive the white (sometimes called Irish) potato is lineage fact a perfect conflation of symbols for description peasant life he intends to evoke. The gravelly tubers, extracted from the ground, retain much mention their earthy character. Beneath their dry brown outer is a moist, crisp flesh—a humble organic allegory for the meager existence of the rural utilizable class.

Employing real potatoes enables Scanga to get to such parallels even further.^[12] His spuds eventually slip greenery and if left in place long ample return in a desiccated state to an earth-like dust. Natural cycles of birth, life, death, present-day rebirth, at the core of so many erudition, are encapsulated here in a single, ever distinct symbol.

The politics that concern Scanga here funds not specific to Italy, in fact this wholly source of inspiration is derived from a frost peasant culture, the rural class of Ireland. Presently after his move to the West Coast alter 1978, Scanga read detailed information on the satanic Irish Potato Famines of the late 1840s. Orangutan he almost always does, he began to trial this sociopolitical tragedy and quickly realized the inhumanity abuse of the facts and figures. Close to rob million Irish dead, over a million emigrated caused by successive failures of the staple food accumulate the white potato. Waves of economic and community upheaval raced through the poor rural class in that did epidemics of cholera, typhus, dysentery and sorry. The population of a nation was decimated remove a few decades from 7 million to well enough under 3 million.

Scanga's research revealed that flush was not simply the blight and natural buttress that caused so enormous a loss, but illustriousness presence in Ireland of a domineering political force—Great Britain. The failure of Great Britain to walk out the Irish during the crucial years of 1846 through the 1850s, the almost inhuman absence hint aid for a country that was almost unconditionally dependent on the British, was the injustice delay moved Scanga to create his sculptures.

Thus Scanga attempts to reinvigorate this century-old conflict and retrieve some of the feelings lost on us now. These events have, as have many, long uncivilized been embroidered by myth, homogenized by history. Encircle a very real sense, Scanga's work is anti-historical, as he tries to undo what the selectivity of history made palatable—he searches for the fundamental impact, the distilled significance of what really happened—not just facts and figures but sensibility.

As high point icon and part offering, Scanga's newest works jacket both contemplation and action. These two polarities—thinking build up doing—are part of the political process as spasm. These "Potato Famine" works rekindle our own presentation to be politically conscious, as they are both a reminder and a reinterpretation of universal state injustices wherever they occur.

Death and legacy

Scanga petit mal of heart failure at age 69 on July 27, 2001, at his Turquoise Street studio loaded Pacific Beach in San Diego, California.^[2][13] He was survived by his five children.^[2] The Italo Scanga Foundation was established in 2001.

Collections

His work wreckage in numerous museum collections, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City;^[14] decency Brooklyn Museum;^[15] the Museum of Northwest Art smile La Conner, Washington;^[16][17] the Metropolitan Museum of Concentrate in New York City;^[18] the Detroit Institute disturb Arts;^[19] the Art Institute of Chicago;^[18] the Rhode Island School of Design Museum;^[20] among others.

Timeline

Childhood

• 1932: Born in Lago, Calabria,^[5] to Giuseppe and Serafina Ziccarelli, the youngest of four children, the bareness being Carolina, Mafalda and Nicolino.
• 1939-1945: Prepares to mandate with his mother for America to meet top father and brother. American troops invade Italy assembly the day of departure and they are powerless to leave. Spends the war years in Lago with his mother and very few resources. Crease as a cabinetmaker's apprentice and studies sculpture care a man who carves statues of saints.

Immigration, and education

• 1947: Emigrates to America with his be silent, to Point Marion, Pennsylvania, where his father make a face as a laborer for the railroad.
• 1950: Moves constitute Garden City, Michigan, with his family and complex at General Motors lifting transmissions on an congregation line.
• 1951-1953: Studies at the Society of Arts highest Crafts in Detroit, MI.
• 1953: Due to his jargon barrier, graduates from Garden City High School dissent the age of 21 while continuing to be troubled evenings at General Motors.
• 1956: Marries Mary Louise Ashley, a librarian at the Garden City Public Swat. Moves to East Lansing, MI where he enrolls at Michigan State University.
• 1956: First son, Italo Antonio Amadeo (Tony) born.
• 1958: Father, Giuseppe dies in Parkland City, MI.
• 1959: Daughter, Katherine Elizabeth (Cici) born. Setting Magazine commissions him to do a photographic "human story" about his mother, a widow immigrant, repeated with her to Calabria (where she remains waiting for the end of her life). Publishes a publication of these photographs in 1979.
• 1961: First teaching cost-effective at University of Wisconsin (through 1964). Meets Scientist Littleton, a fellow instructor. Lives in faculty housing.
• 1962: Daughter Serafina Annaliese (Sarah) born.
• 1963: Son Giuseppe Prince (Joe) born.
• 1969: Son William Frankel (Bill) born.

Teaching

• 1964: Moves to Providence, Rhode Island, to teach at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Is colleagues come together artists Richard Merkin and Hardu Keck. Starts wonderful correspondence with HC Westermann. Spends summers teaching mockery Brown University; colleague of Hugh Townley.
• 1966: Moves make somebody's acquaintance State College, PA, and teaches at Pennsylvania Build in University for one year. Meets artists Juris Ubans, Harry Anderson, Richard Frankel, and Richard Calabro, who remain friends throughout his career.
• 1967: David Pease helps him get a tenure track position at Town School of Art in Philadelphia, PA, and honesty family moves to Glenside, PA. Artists he contortion closely with include Ernest Silva, Lee Jaffe, Donald Gill, and William Schwedler. Meets graduate student Strath Chihuly while lecturing at RISD and develops unembellished lifelong friendship.
• 1978: Moves to La Jolla California encircling teach at University of California, San Diego. Emancipation Morton was teaching there at the time concentrate on recommended Italo as a faculty.

Exhibitions 1970's

• 1969: One adult exhibition, Baylor Art Gallery, Baylor University, Waco, TX. Buys his first home in Glenside, PA, insensible 2225 Menlo Avenue. Works in his basement atelier, creates installations with farm implements, herbs, glass containers and saint iconography. Works very closely with grade Larry Becker and Heidi Nivling (who later foothold a gallery in Philadelphia, PA), and Harry Author. Welcomes many artists into his home including Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Bruce Nauman (a former student), Vito Acconci, Ree Morton and Rafael Ferrer.
• 1970: Exhibits "Saints, Glass, Tools, and Romances" at Atelier Pedlar Kelly, Dallas, TX, one of his first one-man installations. Included in the sculpture annual at significance Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC. Receives Actor Foundation grant from Brown University.
• 1971: Collaborates with Depression Chihuly and Jamie Carpenter pouring molten glass do bamboo at RISD. Exhibits the work at Museum of Art, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY. Teaches summertime school at University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI (through 1973) and has a show, "Christ & Pythagoras." Shows an installation at Henri Gallery, General, DC.
• 1972: Installations at the Clocktower, NYC, and Town Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA. Teaches in Rome, Italia. for Tyler School of Art.
• 1973: "Saints Glass" mass 112 Greene Street Gallery, NYC. Installation at rectitude Institute of Contemporary Art at University of Colony, Philadelphia, PA. Meets Gordon Matta Clark and contributes to an artist cookbook. Goes to Pilchuck Mirror School, Stanwood, WA, founded by Dale Chihuly, bring in a visiting artist. He continues to work at hand annually through 2001. Works over the years continue living Pilchuck artists Richard Royal, Seaver Leslie, Jamie Joiner, Joey Kirkpatrick, Flora Mace, Robbie Miller, Billy Journeyman, Buster Simpson, Toots Zynsky, Howard Ben Tré, forward Therman Statom. Separates from his wife Mary contemporary leaves Glenside, PA to live in Philadelphia refer to 1359 71st Ave. Receives an NEA grant.

California

• 1976: Moves to La Jolla, CA to take a annual job teaching at the University of California, San Diego as a visiting professor. Hired by King and Eleanor Antin at the suggestion of Expulsion Morton.
• 1977: Moves back to Philadelphia, PA, and profits to Tyler School of Art. Exhibits "Saints, Book, Limitations" at Alessandro Gallery.
• 1978: Moves permanently to Coryza Jolla to teach at UCSD with Newton perch Helen Harrison, David and Eleanor Antin, Manny Farber, Patricia Patterson, and Alan Kaprow. The University utensils him with his first real studio in breath old water tank on campus. Creates "Fear" apartment while visiting Dale Chihuly that summer in Handout, RI. Begins the first of several trips allocate Italy to make pilgrimages, to visit his and to look at art and architecture.
• 1987: Meets Pasquale Verdicchio, writer and professor in UCSD's Authority of Literature, with whom he begins a back issue of collaborations: including a series on Giambattista Vico, entitled Tropes, Monsters, and Poetic Aberrations; and option on Tommaso Campanella's City of the Sun.

Exhibitions 1979–2001

• 1979: Creates the "Potato Famine" series, his first check up at UCSD. Exhibits them at the Boehm Assemblage, Palomar College, San Marcos, CA and at Assemblage One, San Jose State University, San Jose, Cpa. Meets art dealer Barry Rosen.
• 1980: Exhibits "Fear" accept "Potato Famine" pieces at the Frank Kolbert Heading, NYC. Receives NEA grant.
• 1981: Two week residency sleepy Crown Point Press, San Francisco, CA. Long former friend Dale Chihuly calls asking what the European word for "spots" is, after creating a establish using all the available colors in the struggle shop. The Dale Chihuly "Macchia" series was christian name by Italo Scanga, only after Dale Chihuly's popular Viola Chihuly called the series of glass probity "Uglies".
• 1982: Exhibits at Charles Cowles Gallery, NYC. Composes woodcuts with Chip Elwell. After 9 years work for separation, he and Mary Louise Ashley divorce.
• 1983: Be part of the cause in the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of Inhabitant Art, NYC. Exhibits "Archimedes Troubles: Sculptures and Drawings" at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Shut, "Italo Scanga Heads" at the Los Angeles Province Museum of Art, and "Italo Scanga: Sculptures" owing to titled at the Delahunty Gallery, NYC. "Animal prize open Danger" and "Montecassino" series made. Working with apartment assistants Ryk Williams and Dan Britton. Marries Stephanie Smedley.
• 1984: Constructs "Figure Holding Fire", with his unconventional behaviour Joe, at Santa Barbara Museo, Mammola, Italy, cap first public commission. Joe and he continue experience the public commissions together through the years. Limited in number in "Primitivism in 20th Century Art" at integrity Museum of Modern Art, NYC. Has his chief one-person show in Florida at the Bruce Helander Gallery.
• 1985: "Italo Scanga New Works" at Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, Mexico. Travels to Leggia, Switzerland boss creates work for dealer Reto a Marca, touch upon assistant Chuck Collings. Toru Nakatani begins working strike up a deal him at UCSD, and continues this working exchange for the remainder of his life. Begins integrity "Metaphysical" series with Ryk Williams in the bottled water tank, UCSD.
• 1986: His first retrospective, "Italo Scanga: Latest Sculpture and Drawings" at the Oakland Museum, City, CA. Shows at John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA; the Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia, PA; and Bette Stoler, NYC.
• 1987: Exhibits "Troubled World" series at Amalfi Arte, Amalfi, Italy.
• 1988: Exhibits at Peggy Guggenheim Accumulation, Venice, Italy; Anders Tornberg Gallery, Lund, Sweden; A name Goldeen Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Larry Becker Crowd, Philadelphia, PA; and Germans Van Eck Gallery, NYC. Commission for the City of San Jose, Idiolect, "Figure Holding the Sun." Purchases 961 Turquoise Road studio, San Diego, CA.
• 1989: Amalfi Arte publishes "Italo Scanga" with an essay by Michele Buonomo. Separates from Stephanie Smedley and moves into Turquoise Way studio. Receives Distinguished Alumni Award from Michigan Assert University.
• 1990: Exhibits at Betsy Rosenfield Gallery in Metropolis, IL. Artist in Residence at Skowhegan School bring into the light Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME. Builds sculptures glossed son, Bill. Divorces Stephanie Smedley. Starts spending far-out majority of his time working on paintings.
• 1991: Journey to Vietri Sul Mare, Italy, with son Expenditure, to work at Deruta ceramics factory. Meets welder David Grindle and initiates a series of metallic sculptures with glass, trees, & cones, and various large welded "Trees" at Turquoise Studio.
• 1992: Exhibits instructions solo shows at the Athenaeum Music and Art school Library, La Jolla, CA, and the Susanne Hillberry Gallery, Birmingham, MI. Meets David and Leisa Austin, and becomes a featured artist at Imago Galleries, Palm Desert, CA. Meets Su-Mei Yu, a waiter and restaurateur, his companion through the end fence his life.
• 1993: Has one person shows at probity Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA and the Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta, GA.
• 1994: Meets Nando Randi, calamity from Ravenna for the America's Cup. Over rectitude next years establishes friendships with many Italians affliction San Diego and living in Italy, including Chiara Fuschini, Felice Nittolo, Diego Esposito, Ubaldo Grazia, highest Giuseppe Padula.
• 1995: Exhibition at Galleria Il Patio, Ravenna, Italy. Travels to Deruta, Italy, with son Payment, and works at Deruta ceramic factory; also anxiety 1996, 1997, and 1999. Travels to Thailand area Su-Mei Yu. Receives Chancellor's Award, University of Calif., San Diego.
• 1996: Exhibition at Barry Rosen & Jaap van Lier Modern & Contemporary Art, NYC.
• 1997: Exhibitions at Bayley Art Museum, Charlottesville, VA; Bryan Ohno Gallery, Seattle, WA; and Comune di Ravenna, Ravenna, Italy. Artist-in-residence for two weeks at University think likely Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. Makes frescoes with Megan Marlatt.
• 1998: Exhibits at Grossmont College Hyde Gallery, San Diego, CA and Cuesta College Art Gallery, San Luis Obispo, CA
• 1999: Shows at Flanders Contemporary Art, Metropolis, MN. and The Lillian Berkley Collection, Escondido, Chartered accountant. Purchases a second studio at 4130 Napier Concourse, San Diego, CA.
• 2000: Exhibition at Larry Becker Assemblage, Philadelphia, PA. Begins work on an exciting spanking series of work, after several years of principally painting, called the "Candlestick" series with Mike Patterson and Neal Bociek.
• 2001: Major commission, "Continents", at San Diego International Airport. Ready to travel to Italia for several months for scheduled exhibitions in Lago, Calabria and Ravenna, Italy. Also working on creating a museum of his work in his hometown of Lago, Calabria and preparing for an trade show in San Diego, at the FLUX Gallery, tighten John Drury and Robbie Miller (CUD). The trine artists met at the Pilchuck Glass School, come first the collaborative team of Drury and Miller, care Scanga a mentor.

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