Allan D'Arcangelo
Allan D'Arcangelo
1930 - 1998
American painter and printmaker. He studied painting in Mexico City from 1957 to 1959 with John Golding (b 1929) under the terms of the G.I. Bill. His reputation as a Pop artist was established by his first New York one-man exhibition in 1963 where he showed his first acrylic paintings of the American highway and industrial landscape, such as Highway U.S. 1 – No. 3 (1963; Richmond, VA Mus. F.A.). Such large-scale canvases visually transported the viewer through a time sequence, as if travelling along a highway, catching glimpses of trees, dividing lines, signs and route markers. In subsequent works D’Arcangelo continued to examine the American landscape both as directly experienced and in the form of generalized contemporary symbols. An essentially flat and impersonal style allowed him to suggest an illusionistic space without sacrificing the viewer’s consciousness of the picture plane. This ambiguity between real and fictive space is further enforced in works such as Guard Rail (1964; Richmond, VA, S. and F. Lewis priv. col.) by the attachment of real objects such as rear-view mirrors or cyclone fences.
In later paintings such as Skewed Star (1974; Greensboro, NC, Weatherspoon A.G.) D’Arcangelo remained committed to his subject-matter, but moved away from Pop Art in favour of a stylized mechanization of the image that recalled earlier treatments of the American landscape by Precisionists such as Charles Sheeler and Ralston Crawford. [Frederick R. Brandt. "D’Arcangelo, Allan." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 8, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T021406.]
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