Born in New York City in 1919 to parents who emigrated from Salerno, Italy, Lucia Autorino Salemme first trained at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League in New York, developing great competency in a highly representational style linked to nineteenth-century formulas. But by 1940, her work radically changed. Through a scholarship to study with Hilla Rebay at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Salemme developed a nonobjective style, much influencd by Wassily Kandinsky's abstract paintings. The Arc (1942) shows Salemme's transformation and the influence modernism had on her work.
Diverging from her 1940s painted abstract geometries, Salemme developed a different stylistic language. Inspired by the Manhattan skyline, Coney Island, and harbor views seen from her Greenwich Village studio, she arranges angular planes, modeled and painted in bright colors. As in Neon Night (1968), fixed architecture erupts in motion, allowing the viewer to hear its noise, see its movement, and feel its exhilaration.
CONTACT
LUCIA AUTORINO SALEMME
463 WEST STREET 641B
NEW YORK, NY 10014
(212) 989-0072
info@westbeth.org