Angelo Ippolito

Tangerine

1999

Angelo Ippolito was an American painter known for color field oils on canvas that has been exhibited and collected internationally, as well as for his central role in inaugurating the downtown art scene of postwar New York. Ippolito was well trained and studied under Amédée Ozenfant in Paris, with John Ferren in New York and Afro in Rome. In 1952, he and painter Fred Mitchell invited other artists to join in founding the first artist-run downtown gallery in New York, the Tanager Gallery, which inaugurated the 10th Street-avant-garde scene of the 1950s. Art critic Hilton Kramer wrote about Ippolito, "the pleasure of color remains his primary concern, and he is a virtuoso in the handling of it. Some of his finest effects, in these new paintings, are achieved when he is juggling bold areas of hot color with an almost reckless abandon.” Ippolito himself told art historian Kenneth Lindsay in 1974, "When I find the color of the painting I find the form." Ippolito's work has been exhibited in international venues such as the Carnegie International and São Paulo Biennale and collected by museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, The Phillips Collection and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.