Armondo Dellasanta Biography

Cornell Select Artists About the Gallery

 

Armondo Dellasanta (1916-2010) was born to immigrant parents in Binghamton, New York and grew up in an ethnically diverse and vibrant neighborhood. Those surroundings influenced his choice of subject matter as an artist. He served in the Civilian Conservation Corps and fought in France and Austria during World War II where he earned the Bronze Star.  He started to paint in the late 1950s and was influenced by the “Ashcan” School whose artists painted scenes of everyday life. He soon developed his own unique colorful, Impressionistic style, painting with customized palette knives he created himself.

 

 

Starting in the 1940s, and continuing into the 1960s, he visited Manhattan, walking the streets from Lower Manhattan, Greenwich Village, mid-town and Fifth Avenue to Central Park. The scenes he photographed in black and white became colorful oil paintings, depicting many iconic landmarks, shops and restaurants from this era.

 

 

Just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, he was sent to protect the strategic train center in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. He stood guard duty at the “old iron bridge” and came to know and love this railroad town, its hilly landscape and people. Beautiful paintings, drawings and etchings emerged. He said, “Everywhere I looked, I saw a painting.”

 

His scenes of his home town document a vibrant downtown, showcasing how ‘small town America” looked before urban renewal. It is a snapshot of a community from another era.

 

 

Noteworthy exhibitions include a major retrospective at the Roberson Museum and a show at the Italian American Museum. In 2008, his life and work were profiled in a 26-minute segment on public TV station, WSKG, in a series called “Expressions, the Art and Soul of the Southern Tier.