Gregorio Prestopino
| Gregorio Prestopino | |
|---|---|
| Born |
June 21, 1907 New York City |
| Died | December 19, 1984 (aged 77) Princeton, New Jersey |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Social Realism and New York Figurative Expressionism |
Gregorio Prestopino, (1907–1984) was an American artist, according to the art historian Irma B. Jaffe:
one of the major American painters who refused to reject the image, has devoted his career to depicting the human condition with a warmth tempered only by honesty.
Prestopino was born in New York City's Little Italy. At the age of 14 he was awarded a scholarship to the National Academy of Design, with Charles Hawthorne. Early in his career he came under the influence of the French Impressionists, but was soon drawn to the American realists of the Ashcan School painters, whose work led him directly to the study of urban life. He won the 1972 Rome Prize.
As a young man Prestopino set up his first studio in Harlem. During the 1930s his social realist paintings had an 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.
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 Green Haven, a New York state prison. During this time Prestopino received high recognition along with Ben Shahn and Philip Evergood, well-known 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.
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