PLAY BALL
Solo Exhibition by Vincent Scilla
Thursday, April 21, 2016
6:30 P.M. to 8:00 P.M.
Refreshments will be served.
[email protected]
‘PLAY BALL’ FEATURES ACCLAIMED ARTIST VINCENT SCILLA’S COLORFUL BASEBALL PAINTINGS
Works Evoke National Pastime’s Pre-TV Era
With the 2016 Major League Baseball season in full swing, the Italian American Museum (155 Mulberry St., 212-965-9000), will present a series of playful paintings by the artist Vincent Scilla. Many of Scilla’s baseball paintings, which he started painting in the 1980’s, combine a solitary ballplayer, sometimes based on familiar players and sometimes not, juxtaposed against a background of advertising, evoking an era before television.
The exhibition takes place from April 22 to June 26. Mr. Scilla will give an artist’s presentation on Thursday, May 5 at 6:30 PM. Suggested donation for the talk is $10. Regular exhibition hours are noon to 6 PM on Fridays through Sundays; suggested admission is $7.
“My imagined baseball players immediately transport the viewer into a fantasy world,” said Scilla. They are sourced from classic photographs of ballplayers and vintage advertising.” Scilla said he breaks them down and recombines them, to make stunning scenes that are injected with a sense of memory and the passing of time. The settings are both familiar and not, with their references to classical paintings and mythical American heroes, placed in a landscape tradition that feels both recognizable and imaginary.
His best-known painting, “Spring Training in the Mountains,” was included in the international baseball art exhibition “Diamonds Are Forever: Artists and Writers on Baseball,” sponsored by the Smithsonian Museum and the American Express Corporation and appears in the book of the same name published by Chronicle Books.
Vincent Scilla’s work has been seen on PBS and ESPN, in print with Gettysburg Review, Art & Antiques Magazine, reviewed in the New York Times by William Zimmer, and included in several books on baseball and baseball related art. His paintings are in private collections, as well as the Butler Institute of American Art, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, the United States Golf Association (USGA) Gallery and the Atlanta Braves Ball Club. Seven of his images were acquired for the newly renovated and redesigned luxury facilities in the legendary Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. Vincent Scilla resides in New York City and Bloomington, NY.
Founded in 2001, the Italian American Museum is dedicated to exploring the rich cultural heritage of Italy and Italian Americans by presenting the individual and collective struggles and achievements of Italians and their heirs to the American way of life. The Museum received its provisional charter from the New York State Board of Regents on June 12, 2001 and is a 501(c)(3) organization.
