By Daniel Ralph Celentano
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Self Portrait, c. 1940s, oil on canvas, 14 ¼ x 12 1/4 inches, signed lower left, presented in a newer frame
This work is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s.
Daniel Celentano was an American Scene painter who is well known for depictions of his Italian neighborhood in East Harlem. The son of Italian immigrants, Celentano was born into a large family. As a child, he suffered from polio which impacted the use of his right leg. During this time of struggle and with the support of his parents, Celentano began to focus on art. Once recovered, he began to study painting at the age of twelve with Thomas Hart Benton. In 1918 Celentano won the first of several scholarships to study art at Charles Hawthorne's Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown, the New York School of Fine and Applied Art in Greenwich Village, and the National Academy of Design.
During the Great Depression, Celentano worked as an artist for Federal public works projects, receiving a commission in 1938 from the Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture for a mural entitled The Country Store and Post Office for the post office in Vidalia, Georgia. He also painted murals for two high schools, Andrew Jackson (1940) and St. Albans (1941), both in Queens, and a large mural called Children in Constructive Recreation and Cultural Activity in Public School 150 in Long Island City, as well as assisting William C...
Category
1940s American Modern Daniel Ralph Celentano Art
