Edward Eugene Boccia, 1921-2012, American

 

 

When he died in 2012 at 91, Edward Eugene Boccia left a trove of almost 1500 art works including some 50 monumental panel paintings. Some of these contain 9 panels.  Some are in the shape of altar panels.

 

 

 

Self-Portrait, 1958, oil on canvas

Edward E. Boccia, 1921-2012, American. The Edward E. Boccia Artist Trust, St. Louis loan to the Calandra Italian-American Institute, NY in 2024/25

 

 

 

His subject matter was religion, myth, war, love, lust, grief, death, and the increasing commodification of life.  A small concentration of his work was exhibited in New York for the first time in 2024/25 at the John D. Calandra Italian-American Institute.

 

 

 

Dreams of a Sea Myth, 1958, oil on canvas, diptych. 

Edward E. Boccia, 1921-2012, American. Private gallery loan to the Calandra American-Italian  Institute, NY in 2024/25

 

This work was done after a visit to St. Peter’s in Rome.

 It seems to expresses a certain courage the artist reprised from the art work in St. Peter’s: that he  need not churn, that he could be purposive; that he could use symbols to shock without heavy-handed preaching.

The image includes boats – a metaphor for birth; and of the sea: the origin of life on earth.

 

 

 

This neglect by the New York art establishment of this artist’s work could be related to two things:

the first: the fact that, although Boccia was born – his father was an immigrant from Italy as was his maternal grandfather – in northern New Jersey and had his entire academic art training in New York city, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri in 1951 to teach and there he stayed his life long.  

 

New York tends to make successful  her own metropolitan New York artists, native or immigrant. And of these, not that many.

 

 

 

Rome Memory, 1959, charcoal on paper

Edward E. Boccia, 1921-2012, American. The Edward E. Boccia Artist Trust, St. Louis loan to the Calandra Italian-American Institute, NY in 2024/25

 

 

 

 

Glove with a Profile No. 7, 1983, pen and ink on paper

Edward E. Boccia, 1921-2012, American. The Edward E. Boccia Artist Trust, St. Louis loan to the Calandra Italian-American Institute, NY in 2024/25

 

 

The second:   Boccia, who practiced abstraction at the start of his art, evolved to a mature style which did not coincide with the Abstract Expressionists (‘the New York School’) or to the non-figural movements since.

 

Boccia’s work – categorized as ‘figurative expressionism’ – is figural and narrative.

 

With its inclusion of both European pre-Christian symbols and  with the Christian themes of his native Roman Catholicism,  its figures  –  sometimes gender-fluid – are archetypes; its narratives mythological and religious. And this even when he depicts real people.

 

 

The artist drew on styles old and new: Baroque, Mannerist, Surreal, late Cézanne, the mid-western muralist Thomas Hart Benton.  And Philip Guston, the most autonomous of the Abstract Expressionists of whose mural work also Boccia undoubtedly knew.

 

 

 

Mother and Child, c. 1930, oil on canvas.

Philip Guston, 1913-1980, Canadian-American.  Promised gift of Musa Mayer Guston to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

Joseph Stella’s Brooklyn Bridge paintings came as a revelation to Boccia.  He found them inspirited  (as if there were directional, purposeful movements within the painting).  He began to think how to infuse spiritual intent into his own (at the time abstract) work.

 

 

 

The Brooklyn Bridge (Variation on an Old Theme), 1939, oil on canvas.

  Joseph Stella, 1877-1946, American.  Whitney Museum of (North) American Art, NY

 

 

Boccia’s reverence for the work of  the German Expressionist (a designation rejected by Beckmann), Max Beckmann, is clear.

Philip Guston and Max Beckmann taught at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri  before 1950.  It was at the St. Louis art museum that Beckmann had his first retrospective in 1948. 

It was at Washington University, St. Louis that Boccia taught from 1951 to 1986.

 

 

 

 

The Town (City Night), 1950, oil on canvas. 

Max Beckmann, 1884-1950, German, Saint Louis Art Museum on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016 

 

Max Beckmann’s wife said that this scene is a cavernous bar.  The nude woman is a symbol of innocence and beauty and naivety.  Around her are creatures representing prostitution, blindness, vulgarity, poverty and greed.  The big city.

 

 

 

 

Death in Sorrento, 1967, oil on canvas.

Edward E. Boccia, 1921-2012, American. The Edward E. Boccia Artist Trust, St. Louis loan to the Calandra Italian-American Institute in 2024/25

In 1967, Boccia travelled through Europe.  This is a study of  the violence of a bullfight in Spain.

 

 

Boccia’s description of the artist’s role: 

“…, the truly significant Hero artist…is not a warrior, rather he is a worshiper. He doesn’t fight ‘on the outside’ – because he prays on the inside – His artistic grammar – i.e., form, tone, color, etc. are the words of his prayers – his paintings are the prayers themselves.”

 

 

 

 

Homage to Fellini, 1972, oil on canvas

  Edward E. Boccia, 1921-2012, American.  Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis, MI from whose website this image

 

 

Boccia’s work is imbued with the mystery of life in which we are actors and are acted upon.

Canvas after canvas, he seems to be saying that the business of life is

to learn to add no evil to the world;

and to do no violence to oneself or to others;

 

but to live the mystery fully, alone and in company. Coming, at last, to a constructive life, to acceptance, to equanimity.

 

His vocabulary is from pre-Christian mythology and from Christianity; his moral inflection is Christian; but his message is universal.

 

 

For this time of repeated attempted violence against the mystery (the fate of the earth, the sanctity of all life, the sanctity of all human life irrespective of national origin, or class or gender…are facets of the mystery)

 

and  of  physical and other violences against all manner of people and institutions…….this is a timely message.

 

 

 

The Last Supper, 1977, oil on canvas.

Edward E. Boccia, 1921-2012, American. Collection of the Art Students League of New York

 

Judas is next to Jesus and Jesus is announcing the imminent betrayal of one of his disciples.  Judas’ feet are shod in the bronze-gold of his betrayal money.  His violence has distorted his features and filled his skin with the colour of envy.

Christ’s feet are the colour of death.

Saint John the Evangelist is on the far right: his customary eagle is a less fearsome bird and is on his head.

The artist’s wife, Madeleine, seems to be at table seated next to a cardinal-like figure.

 

 

 

Boccia’s art is the record of his devotion to the spirituality of his inherited religion, and artistic providence;  and to his own, disciplined craftsmanship.

This is his legacy on marvelous, dense canvases, some of which seem inexhaustibly suggestive of meaning and interpretation.

 

 

 

 

Five Disciples, 1977, oil on canvas

Edward E. Boccia, 1921-2012, American.  Private collection loan to the Calandra Italian-American Institute, NY in 2024/25

 

The curator’s comments include:

The unicorn-like creature on the extreme left is symbolic of Christ. On the table is a gutted fish with a man’s head: an image of the crucifixion of Jesus.

The five disciples are thought to be Andrew, John, Simon Peter, Philip, and Bartholomew.  

Zoomorphs are symbolic, in Christianity, of the human soul and spiritual ascension.  The ram brings the story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac as God the Father was willing to sacrifice Jesus.  The cat guards against sin and also evil. The bird is associated both with the human soul and Christ’s divinity.

 

 

 

 

The Encounter, 1979, oil on canvas

Edward E. Boccia, 1921-2012, American.  Web image from an unknown source to me.

Serpent and cross.

 

 

 

 

Pieta, 1984, oil on canvas.

Edward E. Boccia, 1921-2012, American. Image from Wikimedia Commons

 

This most poignant portrait represents the sorrow of the death of the artist’s son, David.  He was born with Down’s syndrome in 1947.  He died in 1984 after prolonged illness.

I do not know the source of the female figure David carries.  It may be his mother; or Death whom St. Francis called ‘sister Death’.

 

 

 

 

Eugene, 1985, hand-coloured lithograph.

  Edward E. Boccia, 1921-2012, American.  Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis, MI

 

 

 

 

St. Jerome, 1989, oil on canvas. 

Edward E. Boccia, 1921-2012, American.  Molloy University, Rockville Centre, NY loan to the Calandra Italian-American Institute, NY in 2024/25

 

 

 

 

Joseph and Jesus, 1994, oil on canvas

Edward E. Boccia, 1921-2012, American. Image from the website of Kirkwood United Methodist Church, Kirkwood, MO

 

 

 

 

 

Bathers By The Sea, Homage to Max Beckmann, 1995

Edward E. Boccia, 1921-2012, American. Collection of the Art Students League, NY loan to the Calandra Italian-American Institute, NY in 2024/25

 

This painting is thought to be a representation of the Trinity.  The artist himself, carrying the Christological symbol of the fish, is on the left.

In the middle a woman thought to represent the untimely death of David, the artist’s son. There is an ominous green  on her body and green pooling where her left hand should be.

I do not know the source of the image of the masked figure on the right.  This may be another representation of the artist in shadow form.

 

 

 

Boccia’s work, barely visible in New York, has been widely collected elsewhere.

Perhaps a catalogue of his work – a project of the non-profit The Edward E. Boccia Research Foundation – by the independent curator, Rosa Berland, to be  published in Fall 2025 by Hirmer Verlag Munich will bring Boccia’s  incredible achievement,  to larger audiences.

 

 

 

 

 

Middle panel

 

 

 

Right-hand panel

 

People are sitting around, smoking and looking around at the’ flash of the artist’s camera’; and eating tid-bits of suspicious flesh while the evil is all around them. 

The Flesh Eaters, 1996, oil on canvas

Edward E. Boccia, 1921-2012, American. Collection of the Art Students League of New York loan to the Calandra Italian-American Institute, NY in 2024/25

 

The two panels on either side of the central panel tell a tale of  violence, cruelty, cannibalism, and sophisticated indifference.

During the period of this painting, ten years after the death of his son, the artist was in illness which included the necessity of a kidney transplant.

The artist is holding up the dead Christ.

A horned devil in the right-hand panel also has the artist’s face. (The self-awareness, knowledge of his own powers and worth, and modesty of this artist is very striking).

The artist represents Christ as a symbol of universal suffering. 

The entire tableau,  full of venality, murder, and evil reminds that  participation in the Eucharist – acceptance of the redemption offered by Christ – is a symbolic flesh-eating.

 

 

Here is a poet’s description of  the impulse and circumstance and method and reason of Edward Boccio’s  magnificent work:

 

…but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.

 

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965, British born the US),  excerpt from the Dry Salvages (1941), 3rd of the 4 Quartets