Vincent Arcilesi
Vincent J. Arcilesi (1932–2022) was a New York-based Contemporary figurative and landscape artist. His work has been shown internationally at prominent museums and galleries throughout the mid-20th and early 21st centuries. He has also been featured in various notable publications such as Art in America, The New York Times, Huffington Post, Gallery & Studio Magazine, and American Artist. His work resides in museum collections, including The Hirshorn Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Krannert Art Museum, and the Illinois State Museum. Arcilesi created large-scale murals, small oil paintings, drawings and lithographs, Arcilesi's style shifted cyclically throughout his life from European Classicism, Abstract Expressionism, Avant-Garde, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Italian Renaissance. Education and life 
Arcilesi attended Furman University in Greenville, SC. After receiving a BFA in Design at the University of Oklahoma, he eventually moved to Chicago to achieve a BFA and MFA in drawing and painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was trained as an abstract painter, and where he also met his wife, Nan Chapin Arcilesi. Since his school days at the Art Institute of Chicago, Arcilesi immersed himself in the school's collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist pieces. Arcilesi exhibited alongside other students in the school's Junior Museum throughout his matriculation as well as his participation in the school's Gallery Talks, Slide Lecture and Film sessions. Later in his career, Arcilesi began directing much of his energy toward painting representational landscapes seen in his travels abroad. As a result, Arcilesi held many exhibitions showing this work at The Broome Street Gallery through the late 90s and early 2000s. These exhibitions consisted of his works created in a particular place in the world, always entitled "Arcilesi in" with their respective country, which included Morocco, Rome, Russia, and Mexico. Arcilesi was heavily involved with the New York Artists Equity Association (NYAEA) from the 90s throughout the rest of his life, as well as a recurring featured artist at galleries such as the Blue Mountain Gallery, 2/20 Gallery (now closed), and The Broome Street Gallery (now closed). He participated in many artist-run exhibitions such as those held by the Artist's Choice Museum. Arcilesi was a full professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) from the 90s to his retirement in 2015 where he taught life drawing and painting and participated in several faculty exhibitions and art shows held at FIT. During his time at FIT, Arcilesi participated in notable panels and speaker sessions where he discussed his artwork in line with the subject at hand. One example of this is his session, “Sex and the City: Lovers in Rome, New York, and Paris,” at the 1999 FIT Seminar “Healthy Sexuality in the 21st Century.”

Arcilesi was awarded Sabbatical Leave in 2002 to study painting in Morocco and in 2009 to study painting in Rome. He was also granted Leave in 1994 to “create 4 large paintings dealing with mythology in the Italian landscape. Selected drawings and paintings 
A selection of Arcilesi's drawings & paintings can be found on Issuu. Notable exhibitions 

 America 1976 BiCentennial Sponsored by United States Department of the Interior
 Dates: March 11, 1978 through May 21, 1978
 Included Arcilesi works: 
 Grand Canyon, oil on canvas, 48 x 60"
 View from Point Imperial, oil on canvas, 48 x 60"
 Angels Landing, oil on canvas, 36 x 40"
 Shown at: 
 The Corcoran Gallery of Art
 The Wadsworth Atheneum
 The Fogg Art Museum
 Institute of Contemporary Art
 The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
 The Milwaukee Art Center
 The Fort Worth Art Museum
 The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
 The High Museum of Art
 The Brooklyn Museum

Publications and reviews 
 Huff Post, October 2017: Vincent Arcilesi Retrospective Profiles a Stylistic Virtuoso
 Gallery & Studio Magazine, September / October 2010 Edition: Arcilesi's New Roman Idyll by Ed McCormack
 Gallery & Studio Magazine, April / May 2013 Edition
 The Villager, March 1995: Cand Greek Mythology, Celia Bergoffen,
 Arcilesi and the Immediacy of Myth, 1991 by Ed McCormack
 Artists of the Ideal by Edward Lucie-Smith
 Arts Magazine, May 1977, Vol. 51, No. 9: Hedy O'Beil review on Arcilesi's oil painting
 ArtSpeak, February 1985, Vol. 4, No. 2: Palmer Poroner reviews Arcilesi's work through a romanticist lens

Awards and sabbaticals 

 1982 Arts Visual Artists Fellowship Grant
 2009 Sabbatical, FIT, NYC, Travel, Study painting in Rome
 2002 Sabbatical Grant, FIT NYC, Travel, Study painting in Morocco

Works held in permanent collections 
 The Hirshhorn
 The Art Institute of Chicago
 Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art
 Krannert Art Museum
 Pratt Institute Libraries Teaching Collection
 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Archives
 Smithsonian Institution Online Archives

References 

1922 births
2022 deaths
Artists from St. Louis
Furman University alumni
University of Oklahoma alumni
School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni
Fashion Institute of Technology faculty
American painters
1932 births