Italo Scanga (b. 1932, Calabria, Italy–d. 2001, San Diego, Calif.)
“Scanga’s blown glass trees were created at the renowned Pilchuck Glass School where he repeatedly returned as a visiting lecturer. The glass sculptures include two tree species that have become iconic fixtures in Italian culture. They are now even commonly known as the “Italian cypress” and “Italian stone pine.” Although, the two species are not actually native to Italy, where the artist was born. The cypress was actually transported there during antiquity from its natural range of Greece, Turkey, and Iran while several biologists speculate the pine was originally brought from the Iberian Peninsula.
The two types of trees are key icons within Scanga’s artwork. Both trees are long lived. This is especially ironic in the case of the pencil shaped cypress because in Homer’s “Iliad” the tree’s boughs are mentioned being used in Greek death rites. In other myths, the tree is associated with the Greek god Hades (Roman god Pluto), who was the god of the underworld. As for the stone pine, its seeds are the Italian culinary staple “pine nuts.” Also, historically important letters written by Roman senator Pliny the Younger describe his firsthand account of the explosive eruption of Mt. Vesuvius appearing similar to an umbrella shaped stone pine. Since both trees are infused with historic and iconic meanings, they are appropriate symbols in Scanga’s cannon of work focusing on folklore and myths.
The artist’s mixed media paintings on paper are also filled with other iconic symbols that speak about metaphysical transformation. Along with cypresses, ancient symbols such as two intersecting circles known as “vesica piscis” can be found in one of Scanga’s works. The ancient symbol was first used by the Ptolemaic mathematician Euclid to create a perfect equilateral triangle, and the shape will later be used by early Christians to symbolize the mandorla, or aureole, of golden light emitted during the Transfiguration of Jesus. Staircases and other transformative symbols also appear in his paintings.
An additional component in Scanga’s paintings is collage. When first developed by Georges Braque, “papier collé,” itself, had meaning: an element from the real world pasted onto the imaginary world of an artwork created a bridge between the two different realities. Scanga has pasted an image of printed roses onto one of his paintings. Suddenly, a new multifaceted dialogue occurs there; the rose was originally a symbol of Venus, and the flower would later mean the charity of the Virgin Mary. Hence, one printed image explodes with multiple meanings when pasted onto the painting. It creates a complicated conversation in the work that intentionally confuses such concepts as artifice versus reality, past versus present, and paganism versus Christianity.
Even Scanga’s frames can confuse the idea of an artwork’s beginning and end point. A frame with glass is usually a boundary that confines and separates an artwork from the viewer. Several of the artist’s paintings on paper are protected by both frames and glass, but many of his frames are gilded and covered over with a coat of blue or violet paint intended to crackle and craze. The boundary that usually separates the viewer from an artwork then blurs because the painting’s textural paint crazed frame expands the whole artwork beyond the painted paper’s sealed imprisonment into the viewer’s physical space. This planned paradox, which functions similar to collage, allows both the painting and the viewer’s different universes to intersect.
Such thoughtful allusions and methodical constructions continue to exponentially expand their meaning, and this is why Scanga’s legacy of ideas and work continue allowing him remain a vital living force” (—Kraig Cavanaugh).
Scanga has exhibited worldwide, and his artworks can be found in the permanent collections of such prestigious museums as the Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria; Art Institute of Chicago; Detroit Institute of Arts; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Guggenheim Museum, N.Y.; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, N.Y.; Museo Santa Barbara,Mammola, Italy; Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.; Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis to name a few. Solo-exhibitions of Scanga’s artwork have been mounted at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Catalogues and monographs about the artist include Italo Scanga by Dale Chilhuly, Konecky & Konecky, 1993; Italo Scanga by Michele Buonomo, Amalfi Arte, 1989; Italo Scanga: Recent Sculpture and Drawings (exhibition catalogue), Brown University, 1986; Italo Scanga 1972-1985, (exhibition catalogue), The Oakland Museum of Art, 1986; and Italo Scanga Heads: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, July 14 - August 14, 1983, (exhibition catalogue), LACMA, 1983.
Articles about Scanga have appeared in numerous journals and periodicals including “Artforum International,” “Art in America,” “Journal of Contemporary Art,” and “New Art Examiner.” He was also featured on the front cover the November 1984 issue of “ArtNews.” |