Lawrence Calcagno: REDUX

Amar Gallery is proud to announce the exhibition Lawrence Calcagno: Redux, featuring paintings and works on paper by LGBT+ artist Lawrence Calcagno. This transatlantic exhibition, in collaboration with 203 Fine Art, USA, will see works displayed in Taos, New Mexico, and London. For many of these pieces, this marks their first exhibition in London. Calcagno’s life was nothing short of remarkable, and this exhibition seeks to bring a master of art back to the forefront of art history.

In 1941, at the onset of World War II, Calcagno joined the United States Army Air Corps, where he served for three years. During his service, he was recognized for his artistic talent. His drawing, Watch in the Night, won first prize in the national Army art contest in the Southwest Regional competition.

In 1947, benefiting from the G.I. Bill, Calcagno enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, California. His teachers included Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Edward Corbett, and Richard Diebenkorn.

In 1950, he left the California School of Fine Arts and moved to Europe. He studied in Paris, France, at L'Académie de la Grande Chaumière. During this time, Calcagno formed a close bond with Beauford Delaney, an unlikely pair who became friends and lovers in the early 1950s. Their relationship remained strong over the next twenty years. At the time, both interracial and homosexual relationships were illegal in most of the United States. Through Delaney, Calcagno met prominent writers such as James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison.

Calcagno was also close friends with African American artist Jack Whitten. In 1964, Calcagno supported Whitten—alongside artists Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and Wayne Thiebaud—in securing a grant for minority artists from the John Hay Whitney Fellowship. Supporting artists of color was deeply important to Calcagno. In 1965, he became the Andrew Mellon Professor in Painting at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he stayed until 1968. Calcagno was also a fellow at the MacDowell and Yaddo artist colonies in the 1960s.

As Time Magazine wrote in 1955, "Calcagno remains emphatically from San Francisco, as demonstrated by his semi-abstract paintings, saturated with rich California earth tones and the shifting, fog-ridden horizons of the Pacific Coast." In 2024, Hyperallergic  wrote, "Although frequently introduced as a student of Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still, abstract expressionist painter Lawrence Calcagno was his own master."