Ugo Giannini

Ugo Giannini - An Exploration: Artist, Student, Teacher

An exhibit exploring the life and works of Ugo Giannini 1919-1993 will be on display February 19-March 14 at the Visceglia Art Center. The public is invited to a reception scheduled for February 26 from 4:30 to 8pm.

Giannini, a Professor of Art at Caldwell College from 1963 to 1990 began his art education at the Newark School of Industrial Fine Arts where he was encouraged to further his studies at the prestigious National Academy of Design in New York. Drafted into World War II and a survivor of the battle of D-Day, Giannini was never far from paper and pen to sketch what he saw. After the war Giannini continued at The Art Students League in New York, then utilizing the GI Bill he studied in Paris under renowned modernist Fernand Léger in 1949. In the years that followed he began his exploration in the direction of non-figurative, or abstract art.

While at Caldwell College he taught painting, drawing, design, art history, and Senior Seminar. It was the Senior Seminar course which, as former chairperson of the art department,Sister Gerardine Mueller, O.P., M.F.A. said he enjoyed the most since that was where, she said, he would “impart so much of himself to his students."

The exhibition will begin with a figurative work created on the battlefield, St. Lo (1944) and culminate with the never the before seen, Requiem to Those Who Died:June 6, 1944 D-Day Omaha Beach (1992), a powerful work, which was Giannini’s last before his death. The works between will examine the growth of a 20^th century artist as he explores the complex struggle between order and chaos, seeking balance through non-objective art.

The exhibition—Ugo Giannini - An Exploration: Artist, Student, Teacher is partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master’s of Art degree in Liberal Studies from Caldwell College for Roxanne M. Knott-Kuczborski.

For gallery information contact Kendall Baker, Visceglia Gallery Director at (973)618-3457.