LOUIS (LUIGI) BOSA

(1905-1981)

Italian-American Painter and Printmaker


Louis Bosa is known for Modernist genre, figure, landscape, portrait painting, teaching. Born in a small town near Venice, Italy, Louis Bosa became a genre, figure, and landscape painter who exhibited widely, and was also a much-respected art teacher. Bosa's work has been compared with artists ranging from Pieter Breughel the Elder to John Sloan and the Ashcan School. Bosa's paintings, which are primarily oil on canvas, often focus on people and street scenes from his native Italy. Bosa would follow his subjects around, making sketches and mental notes, but the way he combined his observations in the final work often resulted in more fantastical images that conflated several separate scenes. His figures are highly stylized and expressionistic, bordering on caricature. They reveal comedy in the midst of tragedy. He explained, "People are so funny at times they are sad." His work includes whimsical paintings of nuns riding bicycles and similar authority figures engaged in mundane activities. After studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, Bosa emigrated to the U.S. and studied under John Sloan, a member of the Ashcan School, at the Art Students League in New York. He often returned to his native Italy and traveled extensively throughout Europe. Bosa painted for the Works Progress Administration and the Whitney Museum. He taught at the Cleveland Institute of Art, the New York Art Students League, the Parsons School of Design, and Syracuse University.

watercolors


UNTITLED [ URBAN STREET SCENE. NEW YORK ], nd


Gouache on Paper, 15.5” x 11.75”. Signed lower left: L. BOSA

$950.00

ADDITIONAL WORKS AVAILABLE