Anthony Mancini
Biography
Anthony Mancini was born in Utica in 1926. After serving in Italy during the second world war, he attended the University of Fine Art in Florence, the Munson-Williams-Proctor School of Art in Utica, and the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art in New York and Provincetown, ultimately earning a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. from Syracuse University, where he studied with Josef Albers. From the late 1940's until his death in 1977 the elder Mancini produced thousands of paintings and drawings, and as an art teacher at his (and Guy Danella's) Studio One on Genesee Street, had a powerful impact on a younger generation of Utica artists coming to maturity in the late 1940's. His work was exhibited at local galleries in Utica and other cities in the Northeast, as well as in Rome and Florence. Marc Mancini also studied at Munson-Williams-Proctor School of Art, where he worked with sculptor John von Bergen.
He continued his studies at SUNY at New Paltz, and earned a B.F.A. in 1982. The painted sculptures have been exhibited at Sculpture Space in Utica, where his son Marc was artist in residence in 1983, and as part of the "Outside New York City" show at the Emily Lowe Gallery at Syracuse University.
Statement
One of the interesting developments in the Central New York art scene in the past few years has been the emergence of Marc Mancini's painted sculptures. Made with pieces of canvas sewn together and shaped over steel forms, and then painted, Mancini's whacky, bul-bous shapes are both amusing and arresting. Whether the pieces hang from the wall, or sit in chairs or on stools like bizarre humanoids, they suggest an imaginative, sophisticated new mode for painting and sculpture. And yet, those who know the Mancini family are aware that Marc Mancini's new work has its roots deep in the Mohawk Valley: it can easily be seen as a descendant of his father Anthony Mancini's thirty year fascination with cubism, manner of rendering people, objects, scenes into designs which allow the viewer to decipher the original subjects while at the same time enjoying the artist's ability to re-form reality into new, aesthetically intriguing compositions.
Maro Mancini is represented by a selection of pieces from the several series of sculptural works which followed on his decision to combine painting and sculpture. The works we have selected seem indebted to Anthony Mancini in a number of ways. In a general sense, of course, the idea of constructing forms which, like Fan Chair, Sleeping Figure, and other of the works on display, simultaneously represent and abstract recognizably human subject matter is related to the de-constructing of faces and bodies in many of the elder Mancini's paintings and drawings. And, the particularly cubistic painting found on Marc Mancini's Wild Shirt and the other wall hangings seems reminiscent of his father's color and design sense. Shape to the Rescue in fact is based on a tiny Anthony Mancini sketch.
In fairness to both artists, however, one must recognize the many differences in sensibility between them. The usually diminutive size of Anthony Mancini's paintings and drawings and their subtleties of line and color are suggestive of a quiet serenity, of a combination of meditative self-exploration and reverence for the distinguished history of cubism: Picasso, Braque, Gris...
The outlandish shapes and sometimes shocking color of Marc Mancini's work are much a part of the contemporary reaction against the quiet good taste of color field painting and the rigorous intellectuality of the minimal and conceptual work that was so evident in this country during the sixties and seventies. Like many younger artists working today, his work tends to defy traditional artistic categories: the painted sculptures hover in between painting and sculpture. In its often goofy, but socially conscious exuberance, Marc Mancini's work seems close to New Wave rock (the Talking Heads, the B-52S, Laurie Anderson...). Man's Last Dream, for example, is a remarkable evocation of present day fears of nuclear annihilation.
By Scott McDonald
Testing the Waters
Video-still, 2024