- Pietro Pezzati
Pietro Pezzati (
September 18 1902 -February 19 1993 ) was an Americanportrait painter who was located in the Boston area. [ [http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:iOFtcJMS1PYJ:www.askart.com/AskART/artists/biography.aspx%3Fartist%3D105248+%22Peter+Pezzati%22+obituary&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us Pietro Pezzati Biography, Askart.com] ] His art was rooted in theRenaissance tradition. His artwork included landscapes, pen and ink drawings, watercolors, pastel and oil portraits. [Pietro Pezzati Biography, Askart.com]Early life
He was born Peter S. Pezzati to Italian immigrant parents, Sisto and Cesarina Opizzi Pezzati, in
Roxbury, Massachusetts . [Pietro Pezzati Biography, Askart.com]Pezzati graduated from
Boston College High School in 1917 where he studied both Latin and Greek. He was to eventually master six languages. He then won a scholarship to the Child-Walker School of Arts and Crafts in Boston; there he studied under American painterCharles Hopkinson , who took him on as an assistant.In the mid-1920s he taught art at the Child-Walker School for two years, then went on a six-month traveling and painting tour of
Europe , especiallyFrance and Italy, arriving back in Boston just in time to attend his sister Josephine's wedding onFebruary 19 1928 , where he was the best man of Bruno Ferroli. He continued to apprentice under Hopkinson, and worked at Hopkinson's Fenway studio. [Pietro Pezzati Biography, Askart.com]Art career
Pezzati painted many eminent Bostonians and Americans such as
Ralph Lowell [Pietro Pezzati Biography, Askart.com] ,William L. Kenly ,Willard Van Orman Quine ["The Time of My Life: An Autobiography", Willard Quine, page 346] , andAustin Warren ["Becoming What One Is", Austin Warren, page 146] . His paintings are hanging in institutions across the United States, includingMassachusetts General Hospital , Symphony Hall, The Massachusetts Historical Society, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston [Pietro Pezzati Biography, Askart.com] ,Harvard University [Pietro Pezzati Biography, Askart.com] , and theSmithsonian Institution [Pietro Pezzati Biography, Askart.com] , which holds a collection of some of his papers and for which he was recorded as part of their oral history program. His portraits have also been exhibited at the Margaret Brown and Vose Galleries in Boston, at the Corcoran Biennial inWashington, D.C. at various times from 1930 to 1939, the Pennsylvania Academy Exhibition, the 1939World's Fair ,Yale University Art Gallery [ [http://www.askart.com/AskART/artists/search/Search_Grid.aspx?searchtype=MUSEUMS&artist=105248# Askart.com] ] and the National Galleries in Washington.Later life
Pezzati married Mary E. Palmer of Boston in about 1942. [ [http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:EVCXNyYsG7oJ:homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~shawhan/volumeone/320-357.pdf+%22Peter+Pezzati%22+genealogy&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us "The Descendants of Frederick Shawhan (1760-1840)", by Ronald T. Shawhan, page 337.] ] They had two children, Pamela born in 1944 ["The Descendants of Frederick Shawhan (1760-1840)", by Ronald T. Shawhan, page 337.] and Peter. He was interviewed by the Smithsonian on July 15, 1971 as part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program. [ [http://archivesofamericanart.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/oral_histories.cfm/fuseaction/OralHistories.ViewOralHistory/CollectionID/12494 Smithsonian Archives of American Art] ]
He was a member of the Dante Society of America. [Report, with Accompanying Papers By Dante Society of America, Vol. 1966] On February 19, 1993 Pezzati died, at the age of ninety, of cerebral vascular disease in
Westwood, Massachusetts [Pietro Pezzati Biography, Askart.com] , where he had retired with his second wife, Dr. Madeleine Field Crawford after having lived inNeedham, Massachusetts for over twenty years. [Pietro Pezzati Biography, Askart.com]His granddaughter Jennifer Raskin is a television producer and filmmaker. [ [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1321547/ Jenny Raskin bio; Internet Movie Database] ]
Pezzati's niece
Suze Rotolo trashes her uncle in her 2008 memoir by calling him a believer inBenito Mussolini andFascism . ["A Freewheelin' Time", Suze Rotolo, Random House, 2008] Ms. Rotolo herself, however, is a former "red-diaper baby" and an acquaintance, admirer and apologist for the now-retired Communist dictator Fidel Castro of Cuba, to which Ms. Rotolo famously made an illegal pilgrimage in support of the dictator and his Communist revolution on the island nation; so, her recent posthumous claim against her late uncle may be considered within that political context.References
External links
* [http://askart.com/theartist.asp?id=105248 Listing at AskArt]
* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Pezzati&GSbyrel=all&GSdyrel=all&GSob=n&GRid=12060048& Listing at Find A Grave]
* [http://www.skinnerinc.com/asp/fullCatalogue.asp?salelot=2344++++1618+&refno=++672096 Example of a Pezzati portrait "Marion in Blue" from 1933.]References
* "The Artists Bluebook: 34,000 North American Artists to March 2005", Lonnie Pierson Dunbier, 2005, page 479.
* [http://library.nehgs.org/search/aBorgman/aborgman/1%2C1%2C1%2CB/frameset&FF=aborgman&1%2C0%2C?changeRating5=1,b1078979] "Sisto Alfonso Pezzati: His Descendants", by Eric Bruno Borgman, 1992.
* "Who's Who in American Art", Jacques Cattell Press, 1986, page 1292.
* "Index of Artists", Daniel Trowbridge Mallett, 1948, page 811.
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
