Salvatore Scarpitta, "Trajectory"

Salvatore Scarpitta (1919–2007) enjoyed several distinct phases in his career, any one of which would probably be enough for another artist. After graduating from Hollywood High School in Los Angeles, he went to live and study art in Rome in 1936—a sojourn interrupted by a stint in the U.S. Navy during World War II, as part of a team repatriating art looted by the Nazis. After the war, he remained in Rome, showing alongside such key artists of the Italian postwar avant-garde as Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana. In 1958, he moved to New York to join Leo Castelli's legendary gallery stable, which included Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly. After 1966, Scarpitta taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), where his students included Jeff Koons. This show brings together works by Scarpitta, along with those by all of the aforementioned figures (among others), in a survey that puts his oeuvre in context with the artists he knew and inspired.