James Vullo Folk Art

James Vullo was one of the 11 children and he began drawing around the age of eight. Vullo loved the city, especially the waterfront and his artwork almost exclusively reflects the regional area in which he lived. Though his work may have been under-appreciated during his lifetime, his Cubist watercolors from the 50s are thought to be his best works and he is now gaining respect for his unique renderings of Buffalo environs. He exhibited widely during his lifetime nationally and internationally, including shows at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum and Butler Institute (now the Butler Institute of American Art), Ohio. He won numerous national, international and regional prizes and awards and worked in a variety of different mediums such as watercolor, oils, acrylic, gouache, casein, pen and ink, pencil, chalk, wax crayon and graphite. He never drove an automobile and was seen riding his bicycle everywhere. He continued to live on the West Side of the city at 306 Trenton Avenue and painted until he died in 1999.