From Brooklyn to the Bargello: A Retrospective of the Work of Salvatore Catalano
Our new art exhibition, spanning both the Narthex Gallery and the Living Room, will encapsulate the career of storied artist Salvatore Catalano
About the Exhibition
Salvatore John Catalano grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, the oldest son of poor Sicilian immigrants. At eleven years old, his father’s death made it necessary for him to work delivering groceries and helping the janitor at the neighborhood church.
An old Italian building superintendent gave young Sal a small book of Raphael’s paintings, sparking his imagination about new worlds beyond his upbringing. He made frequent visits to The Brooklyn Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art, finding it hard to believe that mortals created the masterpieces he discovered there.
Sal created a series of portraits after a career as one of America’s premier commercial illustrators, decades of teaching, and years of studying the masters in Florence, Italy, explaining, “I look for the truth in a face and find it in the eyes.”
About the Artist
Salvatore Catalano, the son of Sicilian immigrant parents, was born in 1941, and grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn in the 1950s and 60s. He did his first commercial artwork at age 17 when he was attending the High School of Industrial Art. This was the beginning of his career as an artist/illustrator.
His most recent work-in-progress is a series of portrait drawings. The theme, ‘Saints & Sinners’ came naturally to him. The two outstanding influences in his life were the church and the streets. In church, he learned about heaven and hell and the lives of the saints. In the streets, he heard stories of gangsters and organized crime. The portraits are of people, good and evil and in-between. A three-week show of his portraits in 2017 at The National Arts Club in NYC drew overflow crowds.
As an Associate Professor in the School of Art & Design at FIT in NYC, Mr. Catalano taught a course in Florence, Italy called “The Italian Way: Lessons from the Masters” for fifteen summers. He has been an educator at the college level for more than forty years -- at the School of Visual Arts in NYC and at FIT.
Over the course of his career as a professional illustrator, Sal’s commissions include all forms of visual communication from postage stamps, paper-back book covers, magazine ads, direct-mail brochures, posters, billboards, educational material, games and more than thirty books for children. A partial client list includes: The United Nations, U.S. Government Department of the Interior, National Audubon Society, American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, N.Y. Zoological Society, Children’s Television Workshop, State of New Jersey, Ciba-Geigy, Lederle, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Bayer, Roche, Glaxo/Smith/Kline, Wyeth, Alcon, Baxter, Coca - Cola, Pepsi -Cola, Seagrams, Burger King, General Foods, Sony, Panasonic, Citibank, United Artists, Exxon, DuPont, Scholastic, Harper-Collins, Bantam-Doubleday-Dell, MacMillan, McGraw-Hill. His work has been featured in a wide-range of publications, including Audubon Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Natural History Magazine, The New York Times, The New Yorker, National Wildlife, Ranger Rick, Field & Stream, Redbook and Ladies Home Journal.