Amar Gallery continues to provide a global platform for underrepresented artists with a new exhibition of abstract expressionist artist Lawrence Calcagno’s paintings and works on paper. Lawrence Calcagno: Redux is the second exhibition at Amar Gallery’s space in Fitrovia, London, following a successful launch featuring the work of Dora Maar.
LGBT+ artist Lawrence Calcagno was the student of Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still and his works are held in major museum collections worldwide including the Smithsonian, SF MoMA, and the Whitney Museum.
Time Magazine wrote in 1955: “Calcagno remains emphatically from San Francisco is demonstrated by his semiabstract paintings, saturated with rich California earth tones and the shifting, fog-ridden horizons of the Pacific Coast.”
The Lawrence Calcagno: Redux exhibition aims to bring a master of art back to the forefront of art history.
Calcagno has a remarkable life story, and he served in World War II, joining the United States Army Air Corps in 1941. During his service he was recognised as an artist. His drawing titled: “Watch in the Night” won first prize in the national Army art contest in the Southwest Regional competition. Benefiting from the G.I. Bill in 1947 Lawrence Calcagno enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco, California. His teachers were Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still along with instructors, Edward Corbett and Richard Diebenkorn.
Lawrence Calcagno: Redux is a transatlantic exhibition with 203 Fine Art, USA exhibiting works in their Taos, New Mexico space and Amar Gallery exhibiting works in London. Amar Gallery will be exhibiting many of the works for the first time in London, and the exhibition marks the first time a significant collection of works by Calcagno has been exhibited in Europe and the US since the 1950’s.
Calcagno supported artists of colour and helped American artist Jack Whitten (who is soon to have a show at MoMA) get an important artists’ grant.
In 1950 he left California School of Fine Arts for Europe. He went to Paris, France to study at L’Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Beauford Delaney and Lawrence Calcagno, an unlikely pair, the two became friends and lovers in Paris in the early 1950s and remained close over the next twenty years. At the time of their union, both interracial and homosexual relations were illegal throughout most of the United States. Through Delaney, Calcagno became friends with writers such as James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison.
Calcagno was friends with the African American artist Jack Whitten. In 1964 Calcagno supported Whitten alongside artists Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence and Wayne Thiebaud to secure Whitten a grant for minority artists from the John Hay Whitney Fellowship. Supporting artists of colour was important to Calcagno. In 1965 Calcagno became Andrew Mellon Professor in Painting at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he stayed until 1968. Calcagno was a fellow at the McDowell and Yaddo artist colonies in 1960s.
Amar Gallery
Amar Gallery was opened in Islington, London January 2017 to show world-class post-war and contemporary art. Amar Gallery is managed by director Amar Singh who started dealing art in 2010. He is a patron of the Tate & India’s anti-trafficking organisation Shakti Vahini and India’s organisation We Power which provides dignified employment opportunities for women survivors of human trafficking. The gallery also runs a programme of donating artworks by women, LGBT+ & minority artists to museums worldwide: https://www.amargallery.com/donations – over $4 million worth of art by such overlooked artists has been donated to date.
203 Fine Art
203 Fine Art was established in 2006 by artists Eric Andrews and Shaun Richel, with the vision of founding a venue for modernist and contemporary art in the traditionally inclined art landscape of Taos, New Mexico. A premier destination gallery, 203 Fine Art offers museum- quality artworks and personalized, curated experiences. Representing the estates of several significant artists, as well as private, public, and corporate collections, 203 has accumulated the largest assemblage of Taos Moderns available for collecting. Both galleries would like to thank the Calcagno estate and Addison Rowe Gallery for their support.
Lawrence Calcagno: Redux is at Amar Gallery 12-14 Whitfield Street, Fitzrovia, London, W1T 2RF, from 26th September to 3rd November, 2024. https://www.amargallery.com
