Angelo Ippolito (7 November 1922 – 29 October 2001) was an American Painting best known for Color Field Oil painting that have been exhibited and collected internationally, as well as for his central role in inaugurating the downtown art scene of postwar New York.[ Angelo Ippolito, 79, an Artist and Professor. The New York Times, 2001-11-07. Retrieved 2019-01-31.]
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 in New York and
Afro Basaldella in Rome.
[Irving Sandler, "Angelo Ippolito: A Retrospective Exhibition," Binghamton University Art Museum, 2003, p. 2.] In 1952 he and painter Fred Mitchell invited artists
Lois Dodd, William King, and Charles Cajori to join in founding the first
Artist-run space 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."
[Irving Sandler, "Angelo Ippolito: A Retrospective Exhibition," Binghamton University Art Museum, 2003, p. 2.] The Tanager's founders actively sought out underrecognized artists, giving a first show to artists who would later become famous, including
Elise Asher,
Alfred Jensen, and
Jasper Johns.
["Angelo Ippolito: Color as Light," ex. cat., Yvette Torres Fine Art, Rockland, Maine, August 3 - September 16, 2018, p. 15.] 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 (1963–71) and Binghamton University (1971-2001). After his death on October 29, 2001 he was interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
Work
Critic
Robert Rosenblum 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."
[Irving Sandler, "Angelo Ippolito: A Retrospective Exhibition," Binghamton University Art Museum, 2003, p. 10.]
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."[Irving Sandler, "Angelo Ippolito: A Retrospective Exhibition," Binghamton University Art Museum, 2003, p. 4.] 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."[Irving Sandler, "Angelo Ippolito: A Retrospective Exhibition," Binghamton University Art Museum, 2003, p. 16.] 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."[Kenneth Lindsay, "Angelo Ippolito: Retrospective," ex. cat., Binghamton University, 1975.]
Ippolito's work has been exhibited in international venues such as the Carnegie International 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.]
External links
