“Vermont Summer” Oil on artist board, 20" x 24"
Born in Malnate, Italy, in 1900, Luigi Lucioni became one of America's well-known landscape and still life painters. Lucioni immigrated to North Bergen, New Jersey with his family in 1911. In 1915 he won a competition which allowed him to attend Cooper Union, and he began studying there with William Starkweather. In 1920, he studied with William Auerbach Levy at the National Academy of Design, and in 1922 was the recipient of a Tiffany Foundation Scholarship. The Fellowship enabled him to go back to his homeland in 1924 to study Italian primitives. He responded immediately to the realism of early Renaissance painting, which left a lasting impression on his work. As he incorporated realism into his own work, Lucioni's paintings became more meticulous. Lucioni's attention to detail can also be traced to his early work as an etcher in 1922, when he mastered that technique which stresses sharp linear precision, a skill instrumental in developing his precise painting style. In the later part of the 1920’s he spent part of each year in Manchester Depot township in Vermont, painting still lifes and landscapes of the hills and barns. In the 1930s, while European modernism was gaining momentum in the United States, Lucioni remained committed to realism. He later taught at the Art Students' League in New York, and maintained a studio in that city's picturesque Washington Square. He also had a longstanding love of the opera, and corresponded with numerous opera singers. He won many honors during his distinguished career. He took first prize in 1939 at the Carnegie International Exhibition for a portrait of Ethel Waters. His 1941 portrait of John La Farge was voted best painting by visitors to the Corcoran Biennial in Washington, D.C. Lucioni was a member of the Society of American Etchers (Brooklyn), and the Allied Art Association. He spent his last years in Union City, New Jersey and died in 1988. His piece can be found in the collection of approximately 43 major art museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American art.
