I was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1931 and studied Painting and Printmaking at the Philadelphia College of Art. Franz Kline was invited to lecture on several occasions for the college. He brought a new and stimulating message in painting. This was my first contact with the Abstract Expressionist Movement after which my perception of Art was changed. In the decade that followed, Kline was a source for my thinking and painting objective. This revolutionary approach to the canvas was threatening to all my past painting experiences on one hand but, at the same time, there was a strong and inviting challenge to confront and explore. During the two year military obligation in Korea, 1954-56, I saw Buddhist monks producing calligraphy with a brush. This was to be an influence on my work in the future. I opened my first studio in New York City in 1956. Soon I discovered there were thousands of young artists eager to absorb whatever the avant-garde galleries were showing. I was aware and fortunate to be in the middle of those fermenting times. In 1958 I took advantage of the GI Bill to further academic studies. I chose The University of Rome to study the History of Art of China, Iran and India for three years. The following year for the first time, I exhibited a large oil showing gutsy brush work in Sassoferrato, Italy. After two years, I set up a permanent studio in Rome. By 1965 the surface of the canvas had undergone a kind of metamorphosis passing from bold and rapid brush work to contemplative attention for color and shapes. In 1968, I abandoned painting with a brush and I turned to large panel works made of heavy foil paper and moulded in high and low relief fixed on canvas. This was a period when I needed to feel the material in my hands and to confront sculptural challenges. These works were first presented in two one-person-shows, Rome, in 1968 and a year later in New York. From 1969 to 1978 I taught Studio Art in Rome for Loyola University of Chicago, St. Mary’s College at Notre Dame, and Trinity College of Hartford. I recovered my early enthusiasm for printmaking and drawing and concentrated on dry-point and woodblock printing. By 1971 nearly all references to painting had disappeared. The relief work on canvas developed into sculptural, free-standing modules designed to be integrated with architecture. The environmental pieces were exhibited in the “The Fiera del Levante” in Bari, Italy, in 1977. By the late seventies and early eighties, I returned to painting on large canvases. It was during this period that I developed my ideas on creativity seminars. The University of Lausanne and the Swiss psychiatric community became interested in my seminars and offered me their sponsorship for more than twenty years. The seminars were an important source of income for me. In 1997 a retrospective titled CONTEMPORANEA spanned an arc of time from 1970 to 1997, documenting my paintings, drawings and prints. Three exhibitions in three galleries: La Galerie de Couvaloup in Morges and the Galerie Weber in Geneva hosted my work in Switzerland, while in Italy, Il Centro di Cultura Visiva showed my work at the German Institute of Culture, in Bologna. The 1997 Contemporanea was a forerunner exhibition on Internet. The exhibition at Gibellina, Sicily, in 2002 represents the direction of my work today. In spite of the continuous transition and radical transformations in my work, the underlying structure of it remains faithful to the New York School. For me, painting is essentially an exploration in the deepest recesses of our whole being; an attempt to touch the primordial imprint which makes us unique. My paintings are part of the Permanent Collection of the Museums of Contemporary Art at Porri, Finland and Ascoli Piceno, Italy.

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