With a pair of special exhibitions dedicated to the life and art of the late Italian-American artist Italo Scanga (1932-2001), Museum of Northwest Art’s guest curator Matthew Kangas has organized two expansive views of the artist who spent considerable amounts of time in the Pacific Northwest and California where he taught at University of California - San Diego for many years.

Permanent Immigrant: Italo Scanga in the Dale and Leslie Chihuly Collection draws extensively from the private collection of the artist’s long-time friend to demonstrate the wide range of subjects accompanied by recurrent autobiographical themes such as the cypress tree, the hills of Calabria, food, animals and architecture. Italo Scanga’s art is a link to post-war Italian art known as “poor” art or Arte Povera: the use of humble found materials in undemonstrative installation sites. In addition, his painted wooden figures made at Pilchuck Glass School at the invitation of Dale Chihuly are key examples of the rise of Neo-Expressionism in American art of the 1980s. They re-introduce personal content such as consumerism, alcoholism, inclement weather, and the primacy of food. Kangas combines the tall sculptures with other assemblages treating aspects of the Roman Catholic Church.

About Italo Scanga
The Italian-American artist Italo Scanga came to the US at age 15 in 1947 and became a widely hailed artist active in the US but also, over time, in Italy, Europe, and Asia. The youngest of six children, he became a painter, printmaker, sculptor, ceramist and glass artist who also taught generations of art students, some of whom, like Bruce Nauman and Ree Morton, became quite famous.

Besides his pioneer installations in SoHo of the 1970s, New York’s nascent art quarter, Scanga became an esteemed faculty member at a variety of art schools including Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and University of California—San Diego. His 30 years of summer residencies at Pilchuck Glass School north of Seattle came about at the invitation of his friend Dale Chihuly whom he had met while the latter was at Rhode Island School of Design. Their lifelong friendship was based on a mutual love of making art, road-trips for antiquing and finding lost treasures to incorporate into their art, and a passion for Italian food and wine. They shared an aesthetic of spontaneity, found objects and bright color.

Permanent Immigrant: Italo Scanga in the Dale and Leslie Chihuly Collection puts the Italian-American artist’s oeuvre into perspective, shedding light on how his World War II experiences of food shortages and deprivations influenced his sculptures and on his education at Michigan State University. Kangas has re-discovered Scanga’s black-and-white photographs of Italian peasants taken in his native Lago di Cosenza in 1958. Scanga’s installations at landmark SoHo venues like 112 Greene St. and White Columns in the 1970s were widely hailed in all the major art publications of the day including Art in America, ARTnews and Artforum by significant art critics and curators, all following his solo debut at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1972, curated by Marcia Tucker.