Angelo Ippolito (7 November 1922 – 29 October 2001) was an American
painter
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...
best known for
color field oils on canvas that have been exhibited and collected internationally, as well as for his central role in inaugurating the downtown art scene of postwar New York.
Biography
Ippolito's family immigrated to the United States when he was 9 years old. After serving in the Philippines during World War II, he studied with
Amédée Ozenfant and
John Ferren
John Millard Ferren (October 17, 1905 – July 1, 1970) was an American artist and educator. He was active from 1920 until 1970 in San Francisco, Paris and New York City.
Early life
John Ferren was born in Pendleton, Oregon on October 17, ...
in New York and
Afro in Rome. In 1952 he and painter
Fred Mitchell invited artists
Lois Dodd
Lois Dodd (born 1927 in Montclair, New Jersey) is an American painter. Dodd was a key member of New York's postwar art scene. She played a large part and was involved in the wave of modern artists including Alex Katz and Yvonne Jacquette who e ...
,
William King William King may refer to:
Arts
*Willie King (1943–2009), American blues guitarist and singer
*William King (author) (born 1959), British science fiction author and game designer, also known as Bill King
*William King (artist) (1925–2015), Ame ...
, and Charles Cajori to join in founding the first
artist-run downtown gallery in New York. The Tanager Gallery inaugurated the
Tenth Street-
avant-garde scene of the 1950s, and its members soon grew to include artists such as Sally Hazelet,
Alex Katz and
Philip Pearlstein. Its primary audience was other artists who were "simultaneously participants and spectators." The Tanager's founders actively sought out underrecognized artists, giving a first show to artists who would later become famous, including
Elise Asher
Elise Asher (1912 – 2004) was an American painter and poet. She is known for paintings on canvas and plexiglas, illustrating poems written by herself and others.
Early life
Elise Asher was born on 15 January 1912 in Chicago. Her mother died o ...
,
Alfred Jensen
Alfred Julio Jensen (11 December 1903 – 4 April 1981) was an abstract painter. His paintings are often characterized by grids of brightly colored triangles, circles or squares, painted in thick impasto. Conveying a complex web of ideas, often ...
, and
Jasper Johns. Ippolito later accepted positions as artist-in-residence at the
University of California at Berkeley (1961–62) and as a professor of art at
Michigan State University
Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...
(1963–71) and
Binghamton University
The State University of New York at Binghamton (Binghamton University or SUNY Binghamton) is a public university, public research university with campuses in Binghamton, New York, Binghamton, Vestal, New York, Vestal, and Johnson City, New Yor ...
(1971-2001). After his death on October 29, 2001 he was interred at
Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
Work
Critic
Robert Rosenblum
Robert Rosenblum (July 24, 1927 – December 6, 2006) was an American art historian and curator known for his influential and often irreverent scholarship on European and American art of the mid-eighteenth to 20th centuries.
Biography
Rosenblum wa ...
called Ippolito's inaugural exhibition at the
Bertha Schaefer Gallery "a notable event," writing that "his canvases present abstract analogies to a landscape vision, suggesting earth, horizon line and sky; yet the separate realms of land and air are most often fused together in a single coloristic unity." Reviewing his later work, artist-critic
Fairfield Porter described him as one of the few abstract artists "who uses brilliant color as his material instead of something to dress the painting up with."
Ippolito's canvases from the later 1960s explored the abstract possibilities of the midwestern U.S. landscape. His former teacher John Ferren remarked that he "could spend a summer in the landscape of Ippolito." In the 1970s his paintings became more expansive and bright-hued, prompting critic
Hilton Kramer to write, "the pleasure of color remains his primary concern, and he is a virtuoso in the handling of it. Some of his finest effects, in these new paintings, are achieved when he is juggling bold areas of hot color with an almost reckless abandon." In the following two decades, Ippolito's paintings diverged further from their roots in the landscape to explore atmospheric visions. As he told art historian Kenneth Lindsay in 1974, "When I find the color of the painting I find the form."
Ippolito's work has been exhibited in international venues such as the
Carnegie International
The Carnegie International is a North American exhibition of contemporary art from around the globe. It was first organized at the behest of industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie on November 5, 1896 in Pittsburgh. Carnegie established th ...
and
São Paulo Biennale and collected by museums such as the
Museum of Modern Art, the
Whitney Museum of American Art, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the
Yale University Art Gallery,
The Phillips Collection, and the
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
["Angelo Ippolito: Color as Light," ex. cat., Yvette Torres Fine Art, Rockland, Maine, August 3 - September 16, 2018, p. 15.]
References
External links
Official website for Angelo Ippolito
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ippolito, Angelo
1922 births
2001 deaths
20th-century American painters
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
National Academy of Design members
Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery
Italian emigrants to the United States