Enrico Donati Italian/American, 1909-2008

Overview

Italian born Enrico Donati, one of the last great American Surrealist painters, had a long fascination with surface and texture that included mixing his paint with sand, dust, coffee grounds and, at times, the contents of his vacuum cleaner, which he mixed with pigment and glue and slathered on his canvas. Bearing strong similarities in stylistic preferences to the work of Bernard Dubuffet, Donati was an integral part of the mélange of expatriate and American artists at the center of the post war New York art scene, having been introduced by the writer and "Father of Surrealism" André Breton to the likes of Ashile Gorky, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, Giorgio de Chirico, Fernand Léger and the American sculptor Alexander Calder.  Duchamp became a particular friend of Donati. They collaborated on various projects, including the Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme at the Maeght Gallery in Paris in 1947. They devised the exposition's program, decorating the cover of each copy with a foam rubber breast. Donati continued to transform his work throughout the course of his six decades long career. Donati would go on to embrace the Abstract Expressionist movement and exhibited with such major figures of the New York School as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning.

 

Exhibitions

2007, The Surreal World of Enrico Donati, de Young Museum, San Francisco

2006, Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco, California (Retrospective: 130 Selected works from the Artist's Personal Collection 1942 - 2001)

2004, 2005 Gallerie Les yeux fertiles, Paris

2000-04 Galerie Yoramgil, West Hollywood, California

1998 Galerie Yoramgil, West Hollywood, California (retrospective)

1997 Boca Raton Museum (retrospective)

1995-97 Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York

1995-97 Horwitch Gallery, Scottsdale

1986, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993 Louis Newman Galleries, Beverly Hills

1989 Galerie Zabriskie, Paris

1987 Zabriskie Gallery, New York

1985 Georges Fall, Paris

1994, 1990 Carone Gallery, Fort Lauderdale

1984, 1986, 1987 Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, New York

1980 Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs

1979 Osuna Gallery, Washington D.C.

1979 Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.

1950 Galleria del Milione, Milan•1950 Obelisco, Rome

1950 Paul Rosenberg Gallery, New York

1947 Galerie Drouant Gallery, Paris

1947, 1958 Syracuse University, New York

1945-47, 1949 Durand Ruel, New York

1944, 1959 Chicago Arts Club, Chicago

1944 G. Place Gallery, Washington D.C.

1942, 1944 Passedoit Gallery, New York

1979 Norton Gallery, Palm Beach

1978 Wildenstien Art Center, Houston

1978 Davenport Municipal Art Gallery, Iowa

1978 Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga

1977 Fairweather Hardin Gallery, Chicago

1977 Tennessee Fine Arts Center, Nashville

1977 Chrysler Museum, Norfolk

1977, 1979, 1982 Ankrum Gallery, Los Angeles

1977 Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul

1965 Obelisk Gallery, Washington D.C.

1964 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

1964, 1966 J.L. Hudson Gallery, Detroit

1962, 1963, 1966, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1980, 1982 Staempfli Gallery, New York

1962 Neue Gallery, Munich

1961 Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

1954, 1955, 1957, 1959, 1960 Betty Parsons Gallery, New York

1953 Naviglio, Milan

1952, 1953 Cavallino, Venice

1952 Alexander Iolas Galery, New York

Museums and Public Collections

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York

Arturo Schwarz Surrealist Foundation, Italy

Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland

Newark Museum Association, New Jersey

Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida

Detroit Institute of Art, Michigan

Doane College, Nebraska

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome

Gallerie di Piazza Scala, Milan, Italy

Gallerie di Palazzo Leoni Montanari, Vicenza, Italy

Guggenheim Museum, New York

High Museum of Art, Georgia

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.

Housatonic Community College, Connecticut

Israel Museum, Israel

Johns Hopkins Hospital, Maryland

Lowe Museum, University of Miami, Florida

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri

Minnesota Museum of Art, Minnesota

Mitchener Foundation, Pennsylvania

Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Belgium

Museum of Art, Florida

Museum of Fine Art of Houston, Texas

Museum of Fine Arts, Florida

Museum of International Center of Aesthetic Research, Turin

Museum of Modern Art, New York

Orlando Museum of Art, Florida

Palm Springs Desert Museum, California

Rockefeller Institute, New York

Seattle Art Museum, Washington

St. Paul Art Center, Minnesota

Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania

Tacoma Art Museum, Washington

University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley

University of Michigan Art Gallery, Michigan

University of Texas, Austin

Vassar College, New York

Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Washington D.C.

Tougaloo College, Mississippi

Washington University, Missouri

Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Yale University Art Gallery, Connecticut

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