William Ronald, a founding member of Painters 11, was a prominent Canadian abstract expressionist painter who would have celebrated his centenary this year. In honour of this milestone, the Christopher Cutts Gallery and The modern.toronto are hosting an exhibition showcasing his artwork to commemorate what would have been Ronald’s 100th birthday.
Who is William Ronald and why is he so important to Canadian art?
William Ronald in his studio 1970 in front of Altar, 1970, oil on canvas, 78 x 60 inches. Courtesy of the Christopher Cutts Gallery
Many art historians, critics, and collectors alike call him one of Canada’s most critically acclaimed and internationally successful artists emerging in the 1950s. He was born William Ronald Smith in Stratford, Ontario in 1926.
William Ronald, Opus No. 3, 1963, oil on canvas, 36 x 42 inches. Private collection
Ronald graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1951 and then went to New York to study with Abstract Expressionist Hans Hofmann. Upon his return to Toronto, in a landmark exhibition, Painters Eleven was formed in 1953. The group was accredited with bringing avant-garde American abstract expressionism into the mainstream Canadian art scene. Ronald is best known for the crucial role he played in establishing this highly influential group.
William Ronald, Altar, 1970, oil on canvas, 78 x 60 inches. Courtesy of the Christopher Cutts Gallery
Ronald was a flamboyant character with a love for the dramatic. He loved to paint in public, frequently hiring strippers and showgirls to dance around him as he painted. He was incredibly prolific creating large-scale, explosive abstract expressionist paintings that disrupted the traditional Canadian art market. His work evolved significantly over his career, shifting from raw, textured gestures into structured colour blocks, along with ambitious public murals. He became internationally famous for creating the central image style within abstract expressionism. Rather than scattering detail across the entire canvas, his paintings featured a singular, highly energetic focal point surrounded by aggressive brushstrokes
William Ronald, Wellfleet Harbour, 1983, oil on canvas, 20 x 20 inches. Private collection
Ronald moved back to NYC and eventually became an American citizen. He shared a studio with Frank Stella and joined the stable of artists at Manhattan’s Kootz Gallery. He was accepted by critics and collectors and enjoyed a period of success. Eventually, Ronald returned to Toronto and continued with his career that included work for CBC, CTV and CityTV as the host of a variety show. He continued to paint through the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, moving to Montreal and then to Barrie, Ontario where he maintained an active studio.
William Ronald, Jamine, 1997, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches, inscribed on verso “first painting executed at 21 Dunlop St. Barrie”. Private collection
He continued to work until his death in 1998 when he suffered a heart attack while painting. However, he lived long enough to name the work Heart Attack.
William Ronald, Untitled, 1997, acrylic on canvas, 72 x72 inches. recognized as one of Ronald’s final work. Courtesy of the Christopher Cutts Gallery
Ronald won the International Guggenheim Awards, Canadian Section in 1956, and was part of the National Gallery of Canada’s Second Biennial of Canadian Painting in 1957. In 1977, he was awarded a Canada Councils senior arts award to pursue his Prime Ministers project. He gained some notoriety for his portrait series of Canadian Prime Ministers, abstracted portrayals of heads of government opened by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in Toronto. The exhibition toured Canada. These works are in the permanent collection of the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery in Kitchener, Ontario.
1984 media photograph capturing Canadian abstract painter William Ronald standing alongside then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau in front of Ronald’s vibrant, non-representational portrait of the politician
The Christopher Cutts Gallery is hosting an opening exhibition from September 10th to October 10th, showcasing a selection of works spanning from the 1950s to the 1990s, including one of the artist’s final pieces that encapsulates his extensive creative journey. Cutts’s connection with William Ronald began serendipitously when Ronald entered the gallery, acknowledging his status as a member of Painters 11 with the declaration, “I’m here.” This encounter led to Ronald being represented by the Cutts Gallery. Ronald is a significant figure in the art world, with his works featured in major museum collections across North America, including The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and The Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as numerous Canadian institutions such as the National Gallery and the Art Gallery of Ontario. A standout piece in the exhibition is titled September, a 1961 oil on canvas from the Rockefeller collection, measuring 60×50 inches, which was acquired from the Kootz Gallery in New York City. Additionally, the exhibition will include an Untitled painting from 1997, an acrylic on canvas measuring 72×72 inches, recognized as Ronald’s final work.
William Ronald, September, 1961, oil on canvas, 60 x 50 inches, from the Rockefeller collection courtesy of the Christopher Cutts Gallery
The modern.toronto, will also host an exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of Ronald, showcasing works from private collections starting October 24th through to the end of November. This exhibition, curated by Lawrence Brissenden, who is currently cataloging Ronald’s extensive body of artwork. The William Ronald Authentic Inventory (WRAI), currently Version 5 catalogue raisonné project highlights the artist’s remarkable contributions. Ronald, unquestionably the most flamboyant member of the Painters 11 group, produced a vast array of works, each accompanied by intriguing narratives from his life. Notably, he would often inscribe messages on the backs of his canvases, such as on his 1997 painting titled Jasmine, an acrylic on canvas measuring 48×36 inches where he inscribed “first painting executed at 21 Dunlop St. Barrie”.
Furthermore, Ronald will be historically acknowledged as one of Canada’s most prominent abstract expressionist artists, bringing abstraction to the forefront in the country. The exhibition at the Christopher Cutts Gallery, along with the forthcoming exhibition at the Modern Toronto Museum, represents a significant historical showcase, allowing viewers to experience a concentrated collection of works by the master William Ronald. These exhibitions are essential additions to any art enthusiast’s bucket list.
Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, New Jersey, September 27, 2026-January 10, 2027 Joanne Mattera, curatorial essay
We are the children and grandchildren of Italian immigrants. We are American by birth, culture, and education, but by heritage and home life we are Italian. We grew up navigating between identities in the languages we spoke, the foods we ate, the references we understood, and the often vastly different expectations each culture held for us (especially for women). This bifurcated identity was normal, simply the way it was. As in many Italian American families, there is room around the table for others. At the metaphorical table of A Legacy of Making, there are places for those born in Italy or elsewhere but living American lives here, and those whose parents or grandparents emigrated to countries other than the United States, such as Argentina, Australia, and Canada, where so many Italians established homes for themselves and their descendants. The artists in A Legacy of Making draw from the past—from the generations, the journey over, the, the traditions—translating ideas from the original Italian into contemporary art.
Wayne Montecalvo, Sophia, 2024, mixed media, foam, cardboard, wax, digital images, 30 x 22 x 2 inches
The Journey Over “We carry the history of our families and our cultures in our psyches as well as our genes,” says B. Amore. In her assemblage, Following the Thread IV: Concettina De Iorio, we see a photograph of Amore’s maternal grandmother, surrounded by the objects and artifacts of her life, telling a story of emigration, hardship, and a husband’s betrayal. The filo rosso—red thread—that runs through the work represents a Neapolitan tradition of departure. The person boarding ship carried a ball of yarn, while the person at the dock held fast to the loose end. As the ship pulled away, the ball unwound in an attenuated goodbye. Symbolically, of course, it connects the generations from one time and place to another.
The ocean figures prominently in the work of Angelica Bergamini. Her small watercolors and prints are poetic evocations of what she calls “the immense blue.” The Tuscan-born artist is thinking cosmically, but for many the blue is a reminder of the difficult voyage taken by our forebears. Karen Guancione, whose Neapolitan and Sicilian grandparents came to America by boat, is a maker of unique and limited-edition books. One of them, Il Mare is a leporello, an accordion book, that extends to view after view of the sea.
Timothy McDowell, Spaghetti Western, 2024, oil on panel, 48 x 48 inches
Maps are the foundation of the work of Diana González Gandolfi and Gianluca Bianchino. For Bianchino, who flew multiple times as a child between the Italy of his birth and the country where he would grow up to live and work, the aerial landscape viewed without borders reflects his interest in “geography, geology, and geopolitics.” González Gandolf was born Buenos Aires into an Italian family, whose patriarch, Gaetano Gandolfi, fought side by side with Garibaldi in Italy’s Wars of Independence. Her father moved the family for his diplomatic work from Argentina to Indonesia, to Colombia, and eventually to the United States. The artist’s monotypes literally map where she has been.
Italian and Italian American References John Avelluto and Claudia DeMonte draw from Southern Italian and Sicilian tropes to create art that embraces the very symbols that signify ethnicity. For Avelluto it is pasta and pastries fashioned with acrylic paint. Woven into the iconography is a familiar physical expression: thumb and fingers brought together in what Italians call la mano a borsa (hand purse), an outsize and familiar gesture whose meaning ranges from “What do you mean?” to “WTF!” depending on the force with which the gesture is made. DeMonte taps into Italian folklore with her Corno sculpture, embellished with symbolic elements from her life. The corno, or horn, usually worn as a talisman on a chain around the neck, is meant to ward off the mal’occhio, or Evil Eye, a curse leveled at you by someone who is angry with you or jealous of what you have. In the 21st-century this may seem laughable, but Southern Italians—those from Napoli and farther south—hold fast to their beliefs. Hey, a little protection can’t hurt, right?
Antonietta Grassi, Soft Edge (After Agnes), 2025, acrylic, ink and oil on linen, 50 x 46 inches
Wayne Montecalvo, Timothy Mc Dowell, and Thomas Micchelli draw from Italian culture and politics. Montecalvo gives us Napoli’s most famous daughter, Sofia Costanza Brigida Villani Scicolone, known to the world as Sophia Loren, in an image from her heyday. The image appears to be part of an artifact wall replete with ethnic icons and decorative tiles, but look closer. These “artifacts” are thoroughly modern: digital images mounted on Styrofoam with a mix of materials, like cardboard and wax. McDowell‘s Spaghetti Western folds together food and film tropes. Despite his Scottish surname, McDowell has had a lifetime of extended periods in Northern Italy among the members of his mother’s educated and accomplished family, the Macellari. Micchelli will tell you that the social fabric of his early life was more Italian than American, so it is not surprising that his powerful monochrome heads draw from an Italian sculptural tradition, albeit with contemporary sculptural materials: “No matter how widely I cast my net, I always find myself circling back to the Italians and the Italianate when I need to find my bearings.”
The Textile Tradition Jennifer Cecere describes it: “Until a generation ago, everyone worked with their hands. Women, especially, knitted, crocheted, and embroidered, and girls learned by example. All of us had a connection to these traditions.” Cecere makes public art: large-scale renditions of lace in materials as diverse as ripstop nylon and brushed aluminum, which she has laser cut, bringing together the modesty of handwork with the ambition of the professional artist she is. Here she is represented by one enormous “doily.”
Patricia Miranda installing Lamentation for a Reasoned History, 2023, donated hand-dyed lace, thread, dressmaker pins, paper clay, cast plaster; dimensions to fit the space
Antonietta Grassi, Patricia Miranda. Chris Costan, and Lorenza Sannai draw from the tradition of handwork as well. Grassi, whose parents settled in Montreal at mid-century, learned from her mother, who was a garment worker. In A Legacy of Making, Grassi’s “weaving” is in fact a painting, the melding of culture with art training. Miranda takes handmade lace, dyes it red, and pieces it into room-size installations that pay homage to her grandmothers, Ermenegilda and Rebecca. Miranda began with the laces her grandmothers had made, but given the large scale of the works she soon ran out. Thus began donations of lace from family, friends, and other artists eager to support her project, which now brings together the work of many immigrant hands and histories. Costan, whose day job for some years was as the color designer for a ready-to-wear fashion company, gathers the threads and notions of dressmaking into her work. Sannai brings together embroidery and contemporary geometric abstraction, a suturing of genre and culture. She exhibits and curates both here and throughout Europe.
Len Bellinger, bignet, 2015-2018, oil and mixed mediums on canvas, 28 x 23 x 6 inches
While neither is immersed in textiles, both Lucio Pozzi and Len Bellinger have referenced them in their paintings for A Legacy of Making. Pozzi, a dual citizen, has drawn from the humble rag rug—a tradition more American than Italian–for an eponymous series of paintings. Bellinger, known for dense and vigorous abstractions that integrate all manner of materials, has here referenced a fishing net. When you know that his mother’s side of the family comes from Positano, a fishing village in the time of his forebears, his painting, bignet, fits comfortably within a grouping that includes a brawny oversize doily, an ambitious lace installation, and paintings inspired by rag rugs and loom weaving.
Sculpture The influence of grandparents has inspired sculptors D. Dominick Lombardi, Elisa D’Arrigo, and Laura Moriarty. Lombardi learned to use the hammer, saw, and chisel as a boy at the elbow of his grandfather and father, both master carpenters. He employs those tools with a contemporary sensibility, but the Old Country skills remain. Lombardi cites “high and low” aesthetic influences, from Picasso at one end to comic books at the other. Another feature of his personal legacy is a waste-not-want-not mentality that reflects immigrant frugality and resourcefulness. D’Arrigo cites among her influences the wooden forms used by her Sicilian grandfather, a shoemaker. Indeed, the shoe shape turns up in Going Gray, one of the artist’s three glazed clay sculptures in this exhibition, while Moriarty acknowledges the “kitchen culture” of her grandmother, Anna Policella, with its process and improvisation. In this exhibition, Moriarty’s three wax sculptures reference the family unit, an essential feature of Italian and Italian American life.
D. Dominick Lombardi, Il Pagliaccio, 1990, carved found wood and bowling pin, found traffic sign, metal, 28 x 18 x 18 inches
The larger-than-life sculpture that beckons from the terrace of the museum is Talisman #4, a totemic marble and limestone piece by Don Porcaro, who says that an early-in-life visit to a relative’s stone yard sparked something in him. A college sculpture course ignited that spark. Cutting stone “felt right,” he says. “It fed a driving need to work with a material that speaks to tradition, and I knew that the tradition belonged to my culture.”
Drawing from Nature Gardening is evident in the work of Margaret Lanzetta, Denise Sfraga, Patti Russotti, and Brian Alterio. Lanzetta spent girlhood hours in her grandfather’s garden, drawing his plants and flowers and learning from him the dialect names for each. She maintains a garden at her studio in Long Island City—with some perennials transplanted from her grandfather’s own garden—finding in it inspiration for her paintings, in which she combines plant forms and the geometric patterns of many cultures. Sfraga will tell you that her grandfather’s Brooklyn apartment overlooked the lush and sprawling Green-Wood Cemetery and as a child she was captivated by the plants and flowers there. Her botanical abstractions, some in otherworldly hues, burst with germination and growth and the passage of seeds back to the earth.
Patti Russotti scans and photographs ferns, flowers, and fungi, the world of beauty in her yard. She is taken with the society of plant life, often combining her photographs with what she learned from the society inside her home: the women who taught her handwork when she was a girl. Her photographs, sometimes printed directly onto fabric, are often embellished with embroidery and hung from rods. Brian Alterio photographs nature in all its aspects, from the human form to landscape to plant life. His Garlic Scapes connects culturally and horticulturally to one of the most notable elements of Italian cuisine.
Elisa D’Arrigo, Going Gray, 2025, hand-built and glazed ceramic, 6 x 7 x 5 inches
John Monti has come to see the connection between his Italian American identity and the emotion of Italian Baroque, which is laden with floral motifs. You need only to think of the gorgeous excess of Neapolitan churches to understand the aesthetic. Monti considers himself a “cultural Catholic,” drawing inspiration from ornamentation rather than religion or ritual. His floor installation of lily-like forms, Tipped, may suggest to you, as it does to me, the poetic denouement of a garden at the end of the season.
Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Vita (Life) and Eredità (Heritage), 2018, embroidered linen; 5 inches diameter and 5 x 7 inches, respectively
Conversations Here the legacy of making is more reciprocal. In a series of recent embroideries on linen napkins, Milisa Galazzi stitched an eight-panel narrative that recalls a childhood conversation with her grandmother. “Good girls should always be sewing,” said Grammy. “Ugh” responded the young artist at the end of a frustrating exchange. But nonna prevailed. Much of Galazzi’s work as a mature artist involves stitching. Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo’s embroidered doilies are the physical dialog between mother and daughter. In the Sixties, the artist’s mother, Anna Callipari, newly arrived to Australia, embroidered some linens for family use. Half a century later, Callipari-Marcuzzo added words to the well-worn linens: Vita (Life) and Eredità (Heritage). Says the artist, “The threads, my own and my mother’s, link us to Calabria and North West Victoria, reinstating the chain of tradition passed from mother to daughter.” Serena Bocchino’s lyrical poured painting is accompanied by several paintings on transparent panels, a reference to her grandmother’s textile work, a skill the Roman nonna took with her from Italy and put to use here.
In Somma, In Conclusion We are Italian and American. We are artists, and we embrace both of the cultures that nurtured us. But we are not “Italian American artists.” Even those of us who are fully immersed in our immigrant Italianità see it filtered through art training and our involvement in a contemporary art mainstream that is ever more international. The duality that merges into the single identity of artist is shared by our colleagues throughout the Italian diaspora. However, like the filo rosso that connected the departing Italian from the one who remained on shore, a legacy of making—both concept and exhibition—joins us inextricably to the country our progenitors left behind. They shared with us the skills they brought over. I know they would be proud of us, although they surely would be surprised at how we have put those skills to use.
Joanne Mattera is a widely exhibited painter who also writes and curates. She is the author ofItalianità: Contemporary Art Inspired by the Italian Immigrant Experience (Well Fed Artist Press, 2023), which grew into a series of exhibitions titled A Legacy of Making, the fifth of which took place at the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, New Jersey. You can learn more at www.italianita-art.com. Special thanks to Hunterdon director Jeanne Brasile for the invitation to exhibit A Legacy of Making there.
I kept returning to the turquoise table in Anna-Maria Škroba’s Nazar. A seated figure occupies the center, but the table holds my attention. Its saturated color and sharply angled edge give it a force the sitter never acquires. The face has been reduced to a gray oval, while the black clothing breaks apart against the open weave of the jute. Though porous in places, the table seems to push forward. The person recedes.
Anna-Maria Škroba, Nazar, 2026, oil and gouache on jute 18 x 13 inches (Images courtesy of the artist and YveYANG Gallery)
That reversal raises a question that follows Škroba’s solo exhibition, I’m raining before the rain, at YveYANG: Why does she continue to paint the human figure while allowing other elements to overpower it?
Her figures are rarely absent. They sit, recline, walk, or occupy the middle of a field, yet they seldom govern the picture. Tables, roads, expanses of color, and the exposed fabric beneath the paint exert competing pressures. Škroba treats the figure less as a commanding subject than as something vulnerable to its surroundings. The body gives those surroundings something to act upon.
Anna-Maria Škroba, Neither-Nor (Bolshaya), 2025, oil on jute, 90½ x 63 inches
This is especially clear in Neither-Nor (Bolshaya). A seated woman appears within a monumental turquoise field, indicated by thin reddish-gray lines describing her head, torso, and bent legs. The figure is large, but scale does not translate into authority. The surrounding color carries greater visual weight, while the rough weave remains visible across body and ground. The woman never separates cleanly from the surface. She appears held within the field and partially undone by it.
Without the figure, the turquoise expanse might read primarily as a formal event—a field of color interrupted by paint and fabric. The body changes the stakes. It allows the field to feel enveloping, resistant, perhaps indifferent. The figure does not explain the space, but makes its force perceptible.
Škroba’s handling of paint intensifies this relation. On jute, pigment settles into translucent passages, accumulates in thicker patches, or catches unevenly on the raised weave. At times the fabric appears more definite than the image painted over it. A shoulder or knee may gather into recognizable form, while surrounding marks remain closer to abrasion, stain, or drag. The support does not simply carry the image; it interferes with its coherence.
In space, a reclining figure stretches across a muted green field. The body is pale and elongated, but the weave beneath it remains insistently present. The person seems less placed upon the fabric than absorbed into it. Here the figure gives material tension a bodily consequence. The jute’s resistance becomes more than texture because a body is attempting to distinguish itself from it.
Anna-Maria Škroba, High perspective, 2026, oil on canvas, 38⅝ x 33½ inches
High perspective approaches the question differently. Painted on canvas, it presents a curving gray road, a green slope, a broad diagonal shadow, and two small figures in the distance. The people are nearly reduced to punctuation marks. The road and shadow organize the picture, directing the eye and establishing scale. Still, the figures turn an arrangement of directional forms into a traversed space. Their smallness makes the landscape feel expansive, while their movement gives the road purpose.
This may be why Škroba keeps returning to the figure. Her paintings need a human presence, though not necessarily a human center. The body provides scale, fragility, and consequence. It allows a table to dominate, a field to engulf, or a road to exceed the person crossing it. The figure remains so that its loss of control can be seen.
The exhibition’s title, I’m raining before the rain, folds weather into the speaker. The self becomes a condition rather than a stable center. Škroba’s figures occupy a comparable position: they register the pressures of color, texture, and scale without mastering any of them.
Anna-Maria Škroba, May, 2026, oil on jute, 16⅞ x 11¾ inches
There are limits to this approach. In May, a pale vertical form occupies a mottled yellow-green surface, but it is difficult to determine whether the shape is a person, an architectural fragment, or an accumulation of lighter paint. The uncertainty produces little friction because too little distinction remains to place under pressure. Exposed weave and blurred form begin to supply a generalized atmosphere rather than a specific pictorial relation.
This is the risk of Škroba’s recognizable vocabulary. Blurred faces, muted fields, fragmented silhouettes, and visible jute are familiar features of contemporary figurative painting. Her strongest works move beyond that familiarity by establishing a precise conflict between the figure and what surrounds it. The weaker ones rely on material roughness to generate mood.
Anna-Maria Škroba, Installation View, “Why Keep the Figure? Anna-Maria Škroba” at YveYANG
Škroba’s figures matter most when they remain necessary without becoming sovereign. They do not dominate the paintings, yet their presence prevents color, fabric, and space from becoming purely formal. A body sits, reclines, or walks through the picture, and the world around it acquires force. The figure stays so that we can watch it lose control.
Anna-Maria Škroba: I’m raining before the rain July 9 – August 21, 2026 at YveYANG, 12 Wooster St., New York, NY 10013
He Spoke To The Birds, a group exhibition curated by Fanfan Yuxuan Fan at the AAIE Center for Contemporary Art in Rome, is a journey into intricacies, interactions, and lingering conversations. Featuring Jeremias Rumpl, Diego Azzola, and Huang Zhe, the exhibition brings together practices with such disparate registers that, at first glance, they might seem incompatible. Yet curator Fan has woven them together skilfully, allowing each voice to be heard while the collective voice resonates just as strongly.
Huang Zhe, The Thinking of a Small Cluster of White Plants, 2026
In Huang Zhe’s The Thinking of a Small Cluster of White Plants (2026), Fan introduces terms such as corroding, remembering, drifting, and dissolving. Words that feel light, airy, and weightless, yet suggest flow, connection, growth, and a steady presence through change. Each starts with an object, an element of nature, or a memory; through these actions, its point of departure shifts, much as the histories surrounding us do.
Installation view of He Spoke To The Birds, Rome. Artists: Diego Azzola, Huang Zhe. Curated by Fanfan Yuxuan Fan. Courtesy of AAIE and FanFlus
Standing in the midst of Rome’s everlasting history, this exhibition adds to its deep and ever-growing presence. Many works extend beyond themselves, allowing forms to grow while their lines still connect. A striking example that made an impact on me is Diego Azzola’s works, whose galvanized pipes emerge from his paintings as physical extensions of the image. In their original function, pipes carry water from one place to another; here, they do the same, linking works to the gallery and neighboring pieces. Rome has long been expanding and intertwining with new history, and its water systems still exist throughout the city, hidden, underground, lying at its edges, leaving a quiet but lasting imprint. Azzola’s pipes function metaphorically as fragments of a system that never entirely stopped functioning. He seems interested in what happens at the edges, where things cease to carry one singular meaning and instead become more complex and layered.
Installation view of He Spoke To The Birds, Rome. Artist: Diego Azzola. Curated by Fanfan Yuxuan Fan. Courtesy of AAIE and FanFlus
Fanfan Yuxuan Fan utilizes the space exceptionally well. Hung in clusters, the work develops their own conversations, guiding viewers through the gallery’s interestingly shaped architecture. Drawing on the spirit of Arte Povera, Fan enriches the curatorial framework by allowing the objects and materials to find their own voices — pipes, zinc plates, and smoke becoming not merely media, but interlocutors. This exhibition invites closer attention to details, connections, and intricacies. Interviewing Fan was immensely enlightening, offering insight into the process behind it, from engaging with the space to shaping relationships between works.
Installation view of He Spoke To The Birds, Rome. Artist: Zhe Huang. Curated by Fanfan Yuxuan Fan. Courtesy of AAIE and FanFlus
TB: What drew you to choose these artists, and how did you work with them to choose the works for this particular space?
FYF: Diego Azzola and Huang Zhe have already built relations with AAlE. During my conversation with the gallery founder, I proposed inviting Jeremias Rumpl, based in Germany, to join. From the outset, I envisioned the project around materiality and the spirit of Arte Povera while remaining grounded in each artist’s practices that treat materials as active participants in the creative process.
TB: What interested AAIE in collaborating with you on the exhibition He Spoke to the Birds, especially in relation to supporting younger curatorial voices and international artists in Rome?
FYF: There was strong alignment from the start. AAlE has never been focused exclusively on or limited to local artists; its programs have always had an international vision and encouraged dialogue across cultural contexts. I was mindful that this exhibition would take place in Rome, a city where Arte Povera was not simply an art-historical reference, but a way of engaging with a history that originated in a living context for rethinking materiality. That shared vision made the collaboration feel natural and meaningful.
TB: How did you consider the exhibition as a space where different forms of time and material presence coexist beyond physical presence? How did you decide on placement and installation heights?
FYF: The AAlE space is very different from a conventional white cube. Its triangular corners and irregular geometry, characteristic of Roman architecture, opened up possibilities that a standard space would not. I grouped Diego’s installations by color and series within one corner, while positioning sculptures of different forms and tones in dialogue with Huang Zhe’s paintings. Throughout, I was thinking about spatial narrative, how to create a sequence that feels coherent while remaining visually engaging and full of unexpected encounters.
TB: Given the deep history of Rome, what kinds of conversations or connections were you hoping might enter the gallery as viewers experience the work?
FYF: Rome made this exhibition possible in a particular way. There is something about a city where history is never abstract, where ancient infrastructure, ruins, and contemporary life coexist, that invites a return to what is most essential. For me, the exhibition also returns to one of the fundamental ideas behind Arte Povera: not a style or historical movement, but an attitude toward the world. He Spoke To The Birds suggests a way of relating to nature and all living things with equality and attentiveness. In today’s uncertain world, I hope it offers a quieter space to reconsider our relationships, with one another, with materials, and with the natural world — to slow down, to listen, and to reconnect with what is most essential.
TB: At what point does the material stop being a surface and become a collaborator? Is the metal seen as an extension of the work? Perhaps acting as a drawn line?
FYF: I think that’s a very apt reading of Diego Azzola’s work. The galvanized pipes are not simply structural elements; they become active collaborators in shaping the composition and the viewer’s movement through space. Extending beyond the pictorial surface, they function like drawn lines that have escaped the canvas and unfolded into three dimensions. They also carry a historical resonance in Rome, deeply embedded in the city’s architectural infrastructure, so when Diego brings them into dialogue with painting, the material responds to the image, the space, and history surrounding it.
Jeremias Rumpl, House book, 2024
TB: The show title evokes a foundational ethos of Arte Povera: a world in which human and non-human exist on the same level. How do you feel this theme fits the works? How does each artist embody this ethos?
FYF: I think each artist embodies this ethos differently, but all approach materials as something with agency. That openness lies at the heart of the spirit of Arte Povera and this exhibition. Jeremias Rumpl relinquishes part of the creative process to acid, weather, and time, allowing the material to shape the final work. Diego Azzola places industrial pipes, painting, and marine forms on equal terms, without hierarchy, dissolving boundaries between the natural, the built, and the imagined. Huang Zhe transforms smoke into a painted presence, allowing memory and atmosphere to emerge through a material that is almost impossible to grasp. None of them impose meaning on their materials; instead, they enter into a dialogue. That willingness to listen, to materials, to time, and to the more-than-human world, is what most deeply connects their practices to Arte Povera and the title He Spoke To The Birds.
TB: Elements within the pieces vary in weight and presence; how did you negotiate those differences while maintaining the coherence of the whole show?
FYF: I didn’t begin by thinking about contrast or balance between materials. Each artist had already developed their own material language: zinc, pipes, and smoke were not choices I imposed, but vocabularies already in motion. What I noticed was that these materials also carried a particular resonance in Rome: a city built on stone, water systems, and accumulated time. The differences in weight and presence emerged naturally from bringing these three practices together. My role was less about negotiation and more about creating the right spatial conditions for each to exist on its own terms, while allowing connections to emerge across the exhibition.
Installation view of He Spoke To The Birds, Rome. Artists: Diego Azzola, Huang Zhe. Curated by Fanfan Yuxuan Fan. Courtesy of AAIE and FanFlus.
Installation view of He Spoke To The Birds, Rome. Artists: Diego Azzola, Huang Zhe. Curated by Fanfan Yuxuan Fan. Courtesy of AAIE and FanFlus
About the Writer: Taylor Bielecki lives in Gowanus, where her studio is, and works at Pratt Institute, where she earned her MFA. She also studied at Penn State, where she earned a BA in English and a BFA in Fine Arts. She finished as a finalist in the Kennedy Center’s VSA National Emerging Young Artist program for 2017, where she earned an award of Excellence. She has shown prints internationally in a print exchange in Australia and exhibitions in Dubai, India, and the Glasgow School of Art. She has also shown paintings internationally in Gallery 24N, PhilaMOCA’s juried exhibitions in Philadelphia, Pa., Perry Lawson Fine Art in Nyack, NY, BWAC in Red Hook, and IW Gallery in Brooklyn. Taylor works for Two Coats of Paint, TUSSLE Magazine, and has joined Art Spiel as a contributing writer. @Taylor.Bielecki
A pleasant way to enjoy a sunny afternoon in New York City is to explore a hidden treasure located just across from Central Park and steps from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Despite having visited New York City numerous times, I had never taken the opportunity to experience the Frick Collection museum. While strolling through the city with the lovely Theodora Chizoman Anurukem, an elementary school teacher, we paused on a bench near Central Park. Nearby, we saw a banner promoting the Frick museum, which led us to discover that we were conveniently situated right across the street. To our surprise, there were a large number of visitors for a museum of its scale. Notably, the museum enforces a policy that prohibits entry for children under the age of ten, which effectively excludes families with young children from attending.
Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543), Sir Thomas More, 1527, oil on oak panel, 29-1/2 x 23-3/4 inches
The Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, Manhattan, NY which opened its doors to the public in 1935, boasts one of the most distinguished collections of European paintings globally. Located within the Henry Clay Frick House, built in 1913, the establishment includes a garden and a central fountain situated in the middle of the residence. Its collection showcases artwork ranging from the early Renaissance to Impressionist period, arranged without a specific logical or chronological sequence.
Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), Mistress and the Maid, 1664-67, oil on canvas, 35-1/2 x 31 inches
The collection features two notable paintings by J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851) and one by John Constable (1776-1837). It is particularly impressive that Frick was able to obtain three works by Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), especially considering that the artist only painted 34 works in his lifetime that are acknowledged as genuine. Like many collectors, Frick focused on depth, often obtaining multiple works from the same artist. His collection includes five pieces by James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), four of which are large-scale full length body portraits, two portraits by Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) (1490-1576), four by George Romney (1734-1802), and three by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-1669), including one self-portrait. Additionally, it features two iconic portraits by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543), three paintings by El Greco (1541-1614), four by Francisco de Goya (1746-1828), five portraits by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), and eight by Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641).
El Greco (1541-1614), St. Jerome, 1590-1600, oil on canvas, 43-1/2 x 37-1/2 inches
The collection is further enriched with five landscape paintings by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), as well as works by Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Anton Mauve (1838-1888), Claude Monet (1840-1926), and Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599-1660). Beyond paintings, it also includes carpets, porcelain, sculptures, and period furniture.
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-1669), Self-portrait, 1658, oil on canvas, 52-5/8 x 40-7/8 inches
Henry Clay Frick (December 19, 1849 – December 2, 1919) was a prominent American industrialist, financier, and art patron, known for establishing the H. C. Frick & Company coke manufacturing firm and later serving as chairman of Carnegie Steel Company. In the later part of his career, he played a crucial role in the creation of U.S. Steel, which emerged as the largest steel producer in the world.
Gerard David (1460-1523), The Deposition, 1495-1500, oil on canvas, 56-1/8 x 44-1/4 inches
Frick wed Adelaide Howard Childs from Pittsburgh on December 15, 1881, and together they had four children, two of whom passed away in infancy.
On July 23, 1892, Frick survived a harrowing assassination attempt, during which he was shot twice at close range and stabbed four times in the leg while attempting to subdue his assailant. Frick miraculous survived.
Gerald Kelly (1879-1972), Portrait of Henry Clay Frick, 1924, Oil on canvas, 29-1/4 x 24-1/4 inches
In 1912, Frick and Adelaide while on vacation in Europe had planned to return to New York aboard the RMS Titanic’s maiden voyage, accompanied by J. P. Morgan. However, they canceled their journey after Adelaide sustained a sprained ankle in Italy, thereby narrowly avoiding the disaster that befell the ship.
Frick died of a heart attack on December 2, 1919, at the age of 69. He was buried in Pittsburgh’s Homewood Cemetery.
