Gregorio Prestopino

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Gregorio Prestopino
Born(1907-06-21)June 21, 1907
New York City
DiedDecember 19, 1984(1984-12-19) (aged 77)
Social Realism and New York Figurative Expressionism

Gregorio Prestopino (1907–1984) was an American artist. According to the art historian Irma B. Jaffe, he was "one of the major American painters who refused to reject the image, [and] has devoted his career to depicting the human condition with a warmth tempered only by honesty".[1]

Biography

Prestopino was born in New York City's

American realists of the Ashcan School painters, whose work led him directly to the study of urban life. He won the 1972 Rome Prize.[citation needed
]

Variation of style and the influence of the MacDowell Colony

As a young man Prestopino set up his first studio in

anecdotal quality in their description of everyday incidents of the working class, depicting the grit of city life – docks, laborers, vendors, Lower East Side streets. He moved to Roosevelt, New Jersey in 1949.[2]

By the mid-1940s and the 1950s he concentrated on large, solid images that were able to function as universals with heightened drama while preserving their qualities as specific expressionistic images. His more realistic studies are largely black and white and detail poor urban suffering. Exemplifying this style is the series of paintings done in 1957 for "Life" magazine in connection with an article on

social realist painters. In the late 1950s Prestopino used Harlem as his subject. He created paintings that inspired the well-known American movie makers, John Hubley and Faith Elliot. During the filming they never took the camera off the paintings. The film, "Harlem Wednesday", with a jazz score by Benny Carter, won first prize at the First International Festival of Art Film in Venice
.

In 1954, he became a director of the

Mythological figures, woods, brooks, fields, islands, mountains were joined-on powerful canvases that showed Prestopino's new vitality. According to the celebrated photographer Russel Lynes "the sound of the city…gave way to the sounds of the country, the relentless of bricks and pavement and steel to the happy disorder of dappled things."[6]

Retrospective exhibitions

A series of Gregorio Prestopino paintings entitled "Harlem Wednesday" toured the US in the 1960s. A watercolor painting from that series entitled, "The Family" is held by the Art and Artifacts Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Permanent collections

See also

References

  1. ^ Art USA Now 2 Luzem Bucher (1963) p.167
  2. ^ Staff. Gregorio Prestopino (1907–1984) Archived July 19, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, Stockton University. Retrieved February 14, 2011. "In 1949 the artist and his family moved to Roosevelt, New Jersey, a town known for its artist-residents."
  3. ^ "The life of Gregorio Prestopino". Archived from the original on August 9, 2009. Retrieved July 21, 2009.
  4. ^ "Keene State College – Thorne-Sagendorph Gallery". Archived from the original on July 23, 2008. Retrieved July 21, 2009.
  5. ^ "McDowell Colony Fellows". Library of Congress. Archived from the original on January 6, 2017. Retrieved December 8, 2019.
  6. ^ "Gregorio Prestopino with painting". Archived from the original on April 26, 2009. Retrieved July 21, 2009.
  • ART USA NOW Ed. by Lee Nordness; Vol.1, (The Viking Press, Inc., 1963. pp. 166–169)

External links

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