Edmond Casarella

Edmond Casarella (September 3, 1920 – February 13, 1996) was an American printmaker, painter, and sculptor based in the New York metropolitan area. He developed the innovative use of a layered cardboard printing matrix that could be carved like a woodcut, enabling the inexpensive creation of large-scale works.

Casarella was born in Newark, New Jersey on September 3, 1920 to an ethnic Italian family. His family moved to Brooklyn, where he attended local schools. He graduated from Cooper Union College in 1942. He became a mentor to Vincent Longo, a younger boy in the neighborhood who was interested in art and followed Casarella to Cooper Union. Longo also became an artist, and has worked chiefly as a painter since the late 20th century.

Casarella was hired by printmaker Anthony Velonis, who during the 1930s had led the Federal Arts Project in New York and expanded silk-screen printing as a fine art process. Velonis was commissioned to write a pamphlet on this technique, Technical Problems of the Artist: Technique of the Silk Screen Process (1938), which was distributed to WPA art centers across the country. It was very influential in encouraging artists to try this process. The New Deal program created employment opportunities for artists.

In the 1940s, Velonis continued to lead Creative Printmakers Group in New York, which he had co-founded in 1939. Casarella printed serigraphs at this studio. The following year Casarella created the poster for the 1943 exhibition, Artists for Victory.

Casarella joined the U.S. Army in 1944 and fought in Europe during World War II. After his discharge, he studied under the GI Bill at the Brooklyn Museum School from 1949 to 1951, including printmaking with Gabor Peterdi.

Casarella made his first paper relief print in about 1948. He continued to experiment with the medium throughout his career and developed a way of layering cardboard in order to cut it like a woodcut - an inexpensive way to produce large-scale works.

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