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Angelo Di Benedetto Born New Jersey 1913 Died Central City, CO 1992 The son of Italian immigrants from the Salerno province in southern Italy, as a teenager Di Benedetto worked to study at the Cooper Union Art School in New York City (1930-34) from which he graduated with a certificate in freehand drawing. He won a scholarship to the Boston Museum Art School where he studied for three years, beginning in 1934. In 1937, he entered his first juried exhibition at the Montclair Museum in New Jersey, winning first prize and first honorable mention. In December 1938, the Royal Netherlands Steamship Line sent him on a two-month ethnological study trip to Haiti, his first exposure to a different environment outside the United States. In 1940, his Haitian paintings were exhibited at the Montross Gallery in New York – his first solo show. Before World War II, Di Benedetto traveled extensively around the United States doing regional paintings. During the war in 1941, Di Benedetto volunteered for a secret mission based in Eritrea, Africa before the Allied invasion. Following Africa, he served as an orientation officer and aerial photographic officer in the District of Columbia. In 1945 he was assigned to a mapping unit at Buckley Airfield in Denver where he served until his discharge in 1946. Like many other servicemen stationed at the time in Colorado, Di Benedetto chose to remain in Colorado, impressed by the state’s physical grandeur and healthful climate. He settled in the old mining town of Central City in 1947. In 1949 Di Benedetto and his wife, ceramist Lee Porzio, opened the Benpro Art School in his studio where he conducted summer art classes. In 1950, Di Benedetto teamed up with Frank Vavra to open the Denver Art Center. He and Vavra were founding members of the 15 Colorado Artists. Denver Art Center in downtown Denver only lasted about a year. Undeterred by its lack of success, Di Benedetto continued to give workshops, classes, and lectures in Denver and elsewhere. His efforts earned him an honorary doctorate from the University of Colorado in 1977. For more than three decades he explored the circle in paint, sculpture, and shaped canvas. Because abstraction touched upon his deep feelings and spirituality, he felt he could make visible that part of life which “we feel but almost never see.” Di Benedetto died in Central City, Colorado in 1992.

Bring audacious experiments with color and textures to your living room, dining room or home office. Abstract paintings, large or small, will stand out in your space, encouraging conversation and introducing a museum-like atmosphere that’s welcoming and conducive to creating memorable gatherings.

Abstract art has origins in 19th-century Europe, but it came into its own as a significant movement during the 20th century. Early practitioners of abstraction included Wassily Kandinsky, although painters were exploring nonfigurative art prior to the influential Russian artist’s efforts, which were inspired by music and religion. Abstract painters endeavored to create works that didn’t focus on the outside world’s conventional subjects, and even when artists depicted realistic subjects, they worked in an abstract mode to do so.

In 1940s-era New York City, a group of painters working in the abstract mode created radical work that looked to European avant-garde artists as well as to the art of ancient cultures, prioritizing improvisation, immediacy and direct personal expression. While they were never formally affiliated with one another, we know them today as Abstract Expressionists.

The male contingent of the Abstract Expressionists, which includes Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell, is frequently cited in discussing leading figures of this internationally influential postwar art movement. However, the women of Abstract Expressionism, such as Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell and others, were equally involved in the art world of the time. Sexism, family obligations and societal pressures contributed to a long history of their being overlooked, but the female Abstract Expressionists experimented vigorously, developed their own style and produced significant bodies of work.

Draw your guests into abstract oil paintings across different eras and countries of origin. On 1stDibs, you’ll find an expansive range of abstract paintings along with a guide on how to arrange your wonderful new wall art.

If you’re working with a small living space, a colorful, oversize work can create depth in a given room, but there isn’t any need to overwhelm your interior with a sprawling pièce de résistance. Colorful abstractions of any size can pop against a white wall in your living room, but if you’re working with a colored backdrop, you may wish to stick to colors that complement the decor that is already in the space. Alternatively, let your painting make a statement on its own, regardless of its surroundings, or group it, gallery-style, with other works.