Totem Form Wood Sculpture by Italo Scanga

Italo Scanga was born in the Calabria region of Italy, and at 14 immigrated to the United States with his family after World War II. Living in Detroit, he worked on the General Motors assembly line and served in the United States Army before attending Michigan State University, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1960 and a master's degree in sculpture a year later. Scanga worked in an amazing range of media from printmaking to ceramics, from found-object sculptures to works made of glass, cultivating a style that blended Cubist and folk influences. His penchant for transforming found objects into art translates into his printmaking style, where a recognizable collage-like composition is often evident. Scanga was the recipient of numerous grants including two National Endowment for the Arts Grants (1989, 1980), a Copley Foundation Grant (1972) and a Howard Foundation Grant (1970), among others. He has had one-person shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, and the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City and elsewhere. His work is in the collection of many museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Yale University Gallery of Art, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others.