Jerry Ross
Jerry Ross is an American artist born in Buffalo, New York in 1944, living and working in Eugene since 1974.
He attended the Buffalo Art Institute (Albright Art School) and studied privately under Anthony Sisti, a prize
Ross became involved in political activism while attending the University at Buffalo before moving to Arizona to teach elementary school on the Arizona-Mexican border. In 1974, he arrived in Eugene and became an arts activist as president of the New Zone Art Collective and later co-founded the "Salon des refuses". Ross often traveled to Italy with his wife Angela Ross, exhibiting in Rome, Florence, Milan, Bologna and Terni. He created a style called "American Verismo" based on Dal Vero ("After Life or Truth") and founded the Club Macchia artist group inspired by the I Macchiaioli groupof Tuscan painters. Ross has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the NOV -DEC 2010 Visiting Artist/Scholar at the American Academy in Rome and the Gold Medal and Exhibition for 2006 in an art competition in Milan, Italy.
In the year 2000 he won a lunch with the mayor of Eugene, Jim Torrey, who gave Ross the Mayor’s Choice Award in the Eugene Mayor’s Show, at the now defunct Jacobs Gallery in the Hult Center. The painting was “La Mamma” , a portrait of Stefania Mastrocinque, the mother of Irene Grazioli, Angela Ross’ roomate when she worked in Rome. Irene Grazioli was born on 28 July 1961 in Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. She is an actress, known for The Red Violin (1998), Mediterraneo (1991) and Dietro la pianura (1994). She has been married to Matteo Fabiani since 1 December 2007.
Artist Statement:
My artwork is 90% about Italy or influenced by Italian art. I believe students and faculty would benefit from seeing and discussing ideas presented by my work, especially regarding my research into Garibaldi and the Risorimento. During my stint as visiting artist/scholar at the American Academy in Rome, I had an opportunity to research in depth the Risorgimento and the lives of both Giuseppe and Anita Garibaldi which resulted in portraits and figurative works about that period.
Beginning around the year 1991 my wife, Angela, started traveling to Italy. We had met Pier Cesare Bori when he was a guest professor at the Romance Languages Department. We soon became great friends and Pier offered us an opportunity to stay in his writing studio which was situated in a WWII era cave in Livergnano, near Bologna. That led tomy winning a painting competition there and the town of Livergnano acquiring a small landscape for their permanent collection. Later, I had a one-person exhibit in nearby Loiano in the communal gallery there.
The stay in Livergnano led to my meeting up with soldiers visiting the WWII battlefirlds of Livergnano (that the Gis called ‘Liver and Onions’) where the “Wild West Division” fought on the Gothic line. This led to us being invited to a soldiers’ reunion at Camp Adair in Corvallis where my offer to paint a portrait of the commanding officer of those battles, Colonel Bradloew, was accepted. The portrait now hangs in the regimental headquarters of the Division in California.
Angela secured a teaching position at the American School in Milan, and that led to her obtaining an exhibit at the American Consulate in Milan. That exhibit caught the attention of Clarice Zdanski, an American art professor living in Italy. She purchased several landscapes and entered one of them, into a local competition winning for me a gold medal and an exhibit with another artist the following year.
After transferring to The John Cabot University in Rome as a librarian, Angela made friends that had connections to the Galleria Borgongnona, a prestigious gallery in Rome, that offered me a one-man show. I shipped many paintings to Italy for the exhibit that was covered in the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
In subsequent trips to Italy, I managed to have exhibits in Milan, Rome, Bologna, Terni, and Florence, We made friends with the Goracci family of Abbadia, Tuscany and I was eventually commissioned to do a company [portrait and participate in a video production for “La Tavola Italiana”, an association run by the Goracci family to promote traditional Italian foods and artisan products. The company portrait was then presented to a large audience at Castello Boremeo in Milan. During that period,I painted a large portrait of Irene Goracci, the grandmother of Stefano Goracci.
Wikipedia Article on American Verismo
The American painter Jerry Ross, who calls his style “American verismo”, builds on the ideas of art historian Albert Boime and his book The Art of the Macchia and the Risorgimento, Representing Culture and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Italy.[2]
This text had a huge effect on Ross who began incorporating the story of the I Macchialioli into his class materials. Ross's own background in the radical politics of the 1960s and 1970s led to his identification with the Tuscan group, many of whom participated in the struggle for Italian socialism and national unification. In 2013, Ross wrote a "Manifesto of American Verismo," which summarized many of his ideas on the subject.
Desiring a painting style that was truly Italian and representative of their particular cultural characteristics, loose and expressive and breaking with tradition the I Macchiaioli began artistic movement. As explained by Boime, their “sketch style” and “non finito” (unfinished) look was both modern and a clean break with academic “polish”, but also the subject matter was often political as well, featuring socio-political issues such as the plight of women, workers, and farmers.[5]
Ross points out that the most experienced plein air painters generally use this approach, sometimes called “contemporary impressionism.” Ross notes that after absorbing some of the ideas in painting brought into the light of day by the Abstract Expressionists, plein air painters need to incorporate abstraction and descriptive/expressive brushwork as well as texture techniques that give the surface a three-dimensional quality. His class “abstraction in plein air emphasizes the idea of discovery of large abstract shapes and the importance of composition. In his approach, “there is abstraction within realism and realism within abstraction.”[6]
Exhibit Themes
1. Loiano/Livergnano Portratits: Pier Cesare Bori, Andrea Guerra, Carlo Bianci, Polly Piva
2. The “Discovery” of Macchia and landscape examples
3. The “Italian Beach” and beach scenes from Martinsicuro
4. Portraits of Italian literary, political, and historic figures
5. Old Mster Studies
6. Additional portraits: Sagra inspired, Italian artists, Giuseppe and Anita Garibaldi
7. Figurative work: Italian battle scenes, images from an Italian sketchbook, The I Macchiaioli
8. Natura Morta (Still life inspired by the Italian and European tradition)
9. Tuscan landscapes in the American verismo style
10. Italian vedite: scenes of Italian architecture, buildings, views from on high
What will be exhibited in the Retrospective?
Here is an abbreviated catalogue of what will be shown:
La Vedova di Guerra: oil on canvas 35 x 48 x 1
The Battle of Chrysopolis (Between Constantine and Licinius).
Ciceruacchio
portrait, woman, denim, abstract, female
Description
The artist's wife, Angela Ross, painted on the Oregon coast near Eugene. An example of the "macchia" underpainting and partial overlay of pigment giving this portrait an abstract quality. This characterizes the artist's "Vinci" style which is a hats off to drawing as a means of observation (Leonardo) combined with the artist's interest in "spot" or "stain" technique from the Italian I Macchiaioli. Although painted for a competition to place local art on city buildings, this work has extended an Italian style into a post-modern genre and costume. The subject's jeans jacket and bright luminosity of the sky (which is reflected by the model's face) creates a very positive and evocative statement.
Nonna Toscana: oil on canvas 20 x 30 x 1
Jerry Ross's oil Portrait of Erina is a depiction of a woman that defies popular femininity yet defines who she is, as a woman, boldly. The label describes it as an oil painting of an Italian nonna from Tuscany, thereby setting up the viewer to witness her as not only female but as a matriarchal figure. However, she is depicted outside of any motherly or grandmotherly setting, standing alone, with an expression that is the antithesis of the soft, submissive, and nurturing female stereotype. Critical Review of painting: http://jerryrosspittore.com/analysis2.htm Note: This painting was originally titled "Fiorella" (flower) which is the name of her daughter. The sitter's actual name is Irene but I am still not certain of the exact spelling in Italian, so I have decided to just call it Nonna Tucana -- Tuscan grandmother. She passed away recently at the age of 94. Her grandson, Stefano Goracci , is a collector of my artwork.
N
Martinsicuro Beach
I Macchiaioli:
Roman Girl:
Pier Paolo Pasolini Portrait:
Wetlands North of Florence, Oregon
https://jerryrosspittore.com
https://burchfieldpenney.org/art-and-artists/people/profile:jerry-ross/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Ross_(painter)
https://www.singulart.com/en/artworks/jerry-ross-la-vedova-di-guerra-1280307?campaign_id=1717
https://www.singulart.com/en/artworks/jerry-ross-angela-in-denim--1261389?campaign_id=1717
https://www.singulart.com/en/artworks/jerry-ross-ciceruacchio-1542059?campaign_id=1717
https://jerryrosspittore.com/critics.htm