LUIGI LUCIONI (1900-1988)
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Biography • Luigi Lucioni (1900-1988)
The son of a coppersmith, Luigi Lucioni was born on November 4, 1900 in Malante, a small town 30 miles north of Milan. As a child his ability to draw was recognized and he was sent to the local art school. When he was ten years old, Lucioni came to the United States with his family, and five years later he was studying art in night classes at the Cooper Union. In 1919, Lucioni enrolled at the National Academy of Design while supporting himself as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines. After three full years at the National Academy, Lucioni received a fellowship to The Tiffany Foundation that enabled him to spend two months at Laurelton Hall in Oyster Bay, New York over the summer of 1924. This initiated his first interest in landscape painting and Lucioni spent many summers in the 1920s at Laurelton Hall with his Tiffany Foundation scholarship that was extended through 1932.
In 1925 Lucioni traveled to Italy and visited museums where he studied the work of the Italian Renaissance artists. When he returned to New York, he opened a studio in Washington Square. In 1926 Lucioni received his first museum sale for the painting Interior to the High Museum in Atlanta and exhibited a portrait titled My Sister at the National Academy of Design. He then exhibited at the National Academy annually through the 1940s. In 1928 Lucioni began exhibiting in the Carnegie International, receiving a prize for his portrait of Ethel Waters in 1939 and exhibiting through 1950. In Lucioni also exhibited at the Corcoran Biennial from 1928-1953.
Lucioni had his first one-man exhibition in New York in 1927 at the Ferargil Galleries, where he continued to have solo exhibitions through 1939. Lucioni quickly won recognition, primarily for his still life painting, as one of this country’s most adept and successful artists. During the Depression, when other artists found it difficult to earn a living from their art, Lucioni could not produce his exquisitely composed, meticulously finished canvases quickly enough to satisfy demand. In 1932 Lucioni scored a tremendous coup when The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased Dahlias and Apples, 1931. With this purchase Lucioni became the youngest contemporary artist to have a painting included in the Metropolitan’s collection. The museum exchanged the work plus additional funds in 1934 to purchase Pears with Pewter, 1930. Private collectors and public institutions across the country, including the Fogg Museum and the San Diego Museum of Art, acquired his work. Featured in group shows from Dallas to Milwaukee and Memphis, Lucioni cultivated and maintained a truly national reputation.
In 1930 Lucioni was commissioned by Electra Havemeyer Webb to paint a landscape of Vermont as a wedding present for her daughter. This was the first of numerous trips to Vermont for the artist. After spending summers in a house in Shelburne provided for him by Mrs. Webb, Lucioni purchased his own home in Manchester, Vermont in 1939. Because of his love of painting out-of-doors, he produced many Vermont landscapes, incorporating into them the colorful and nostalgic old barns and silos that are such a prominent part of the scenery in the area.
Lucioni was elected a full Academician by the National Academy of Design in 1941. He was represented by Associated American Artists in the early 1940s and then Milch Galleries in New York in the 1940s through the 1960s. Lucioni was a member of the American Society of Etchers and the Audubon Artists. The Shelburne Museum held a retrospective of his paintings and prints in 1968. Lucioni died in Union City, New Jersey in 1988.