Art Inspired by America

Works by Italian Immigrant Artists Stella, Romano and Guglielmi

Aug 30, 2009 Meg Nola

Joseph Stella, Umberto Romano and O. Louis Guglielmi all immigrated to the United States from Italy and later created artwork reflective of the American experience.

In the later decades of the 1800s through the early 20th century, America attracted many immigrants from Italy. Among the diverse crowds were three future artists — Joseph Stella, Umberto Romano and O. Louis Guglielmi — who would develop unique styles and be inspired uniquely by their new homeland.

Joseph Stella

Joseph Stella (1877-1946) was born in southern Italy’s Muro Lucano and made his way to the United States in 1896, initially with the plan of studying medicine. Stella’s passion for art soon became more fascinating, however, and he enrolled in the New York Art Students League. At the League, he was taught by both William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri, the latter a driving force behind the artistic movement known as the Ashcan School.

Henri encouraged his students to depict scenes of vivid realism, and Stella aptly complied. Stella’s New York included fellow immigrants and residents of the Bowery, the colorful and crowded area of the city where Stella was then living. Stella was later commissioned to produce illustrations showing the plight of West Virginia coal miners and Pittsburgh steelworkers, providing compelling visual evidence for the need for better working conditions and healthier standards of living. Stella likened Pittsburgh to the poet Dante’s inferno, full of fire from factories, soot, smoke, and a "black mysterious mass."

Following a trip back to Europe and interaction with the Italian Futurists, Stella returned to the United States and created two major American-related works. Battle of Lights, Coney Island and The Brooklyn Bridge are electric fusions of famed New York landmarks and Futurist-influenced prismatic angles and colors. Stella was fascinated by the engineering marvel which spanned the East River, and his painting of the Brooklyn Bridge is a pulsating, energetic glimpse of American life during one of the country’s most pulsating, energetic eras.

Umberto Romano

Umberto Romano (1906-1982) emigrated from Bracigliano, Italy to the New England area when he was a child. He attended the National Academy of Design in New York and received various artistic fellowships, later establishing the Romano School of Art in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Romano also taught at Massachusetts’s Worcester Museum and the National Academy of Design and was known as a compassionate and enthusiastic instructor.

As part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, Romano painted a six panel historic mural at the Springfield, Massachusetts post office building between 1937 and 1938. Romano was further commissioned to paint a portrait of President Roosevelt’s mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt —a considerable honor, as the President was an only child and Sara and Franklin were quite close.

Continuing on in the presidential vein, Romano’s Great Men series included a striking portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Through the use of an abstract dribble technique and a melancholy blue palette, Romano veered away from conventional solemnly posed, bearded or tall-hatted depictions of Lincoln. Romano instead offered a more introspective view of America’s 16th President and the intense issues he faced during his terms in office.

O. Louis Guglielmi

Osvaldo Luigi Guglielmi, known later as O. Louis Guglielmi (1906-1956), began his life in Cairo, Egypt. His parents were originally from Italy and moved to New York’s Harlem neighborhood in 1914, where Guglielmi would become well-acquainted with the disenfranchisement of the American poor. Like Umberto Romano, Guglielmi attended the National Academy of Design and was awarded a fellowship from the Tiffany Foundation. Guglielmi also produced paintings and murals for the Federal Art Project branch of the Works Progress Administration during the 1930s.

Guglielmi is considered one of the Magic Realists, and he did work primarily from visions within his own mind as opposed to painting from life. He has been labeled a Social Surrealist as well, his art often carrying undertones of sadness or impending doom. Scenes like Relief Blues (ca. 1938) show a dispirited family being interviewed for welfare — or what was then often negatively referred to as "the dole." Odd Fellows Hall of 1934 offers a ghostly landscape of a town that appears to be abandoned, except for a lone female figure who seems lost in a lost world.

Two of Guglielmi’s other works, Martyr Hill and Town Square, feature desolate New England views, and both include statues of war heroes whose heads are bent downward instead of held high with pride. And while Guglielmi’s subject matter may not appear to reflect positively upon America, the context of the times needs to be taken into consideration. The Depression was a long, bleak decade for many Americans, and through Gugliemi’s art, their troubles and the country’s triumphant struggle to become prosperous again can be rightfully acknowledged.

Sources

• Joseph Stella’s Pittsburgh -- Carnegie Library
• Man Sings of Man: Umberto Romano, 1906-1982 (2007 Exhibit Catalog, Cape Ann Historical Museum)
• O. Louis Guglielmi, Odd Fellows Hall -- The University of Kentucky Art Museum

The copyright of the article Art Inspired by America in Modern Art History is owned by Meg Nola. Permission to republish Art Inspired by America in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

The Bridge (The Brooklyn Bridge) - Joseph Stella

Abraham Lincoln - Umberto Romano

Martyr Hill - O. Louis Guglielmi