Louis Bosa
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Louis Bosa, photo courtesy James A. Michener Art Museum archives | | |
PAINTER, PRINTMAKER
BORN: January 1, 1905, Cordoipo, Italy
DIED: October 19, 1981, Doylestown, PA
Born near Venice, Italy in 1905, the son of a stonemason, painter Louis Bosa's work has been compared with artists ranging from Pieter Breughel the Elder to John Sloan and the Ashcan School. Bosa's paintings, which are primarily oil on canvas, often focus on people and street scenes from his native Italy. Bosa would follow his subjects around, making sketches and mental notes, but the way he combined his observations in the final work often resulted in more fantastical images that conflated several separate scenes. His figures are highly stylized and expressionistic, bordering on caricature. They reveal comedy in the midst of tragedy; "People are so funny at times they are sad," he said. His work includes whimsical paintings of nuns riding bicycles and similar authority figures engaged in mundane activities. After studies at the Academia della Belle Arti in Venice, Bosa emigrated to the U.S. and studied under John Sloan, a member of the Ashcan School, at the Art Students League in New York. He often returned to his native Italy and traveled extensivly through Europe. Bosa painted for the Works Progress Administration and the Whitney Museum. He taught at the Cleveland Institute of Art, the New York Art Students League, the Parsons School of Design, and Syracuse University.
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