Opening May 1 at Helicline Fine Art in New York City, is Antonio Petruccelli: Rediscovering a Modernist, an exhibition on the work of a prominent cover artist who contributed to many great publications. Petruccelli, who was active on the East Coast for more than 60 years, created 24 covers for Fortune magazine, four for the New Yorker, and dozens of other illustrations for Vanity Fair, Collier’s, Time/Life and even the U.S. Postal Service. Although Petruccelli worked right up until his death in 1994, the Helicline show will largely feature work from the 1930s through the 1960s, which was an important period of American illustration.
Antonio Petruccelli (1907-1994), New Year’s Eve Times Square, New Yorker cover proposal, ca. 1939. Gouache on board, 17½ x 12 in.
Illustration, which has seen highs and lows within American art, has become increasingly more celebrated and collected in recent years, though that was not always the case. “Antonio Petruccelli is typical of a certain generation of visually innovative American artists whose reputation suffered from an association with creating images for the public in magazines and books,” says Kirk Petruccelli, the artist’s grandson.
Antonio Petruccelli (1907-1994), Play Ball, New Yorker cover proposal, ca. 1939. Gouache on board, 15 x 11 in., estate stamp verso.
Today, works by Norman Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker and N.C. Wyeth are selling for seven and eight figures, and interest within all of illustration has grown rapidly as collectors connect once again with the imagery of the books, magazines, posters and newspapers of a different time.
Antonio Petruccelli painting at his easel. Photo courtesy Helicline Fine Art.
“Helicline Fine Art is proud to reintroduce the world to the inspired work of this great and relatively unknown modern artist. We saw Petruccelli‘s works in a New Jersey gallery more than a decade ago and have been asking the family to allow us to mount a full exhibition honoring Antonio ever since,” says gallery owner Keith Sherman. “We are thrilled to bring this first-rate artist back in the public’s consciousness.”
Antonio Petruccelli (1907-1994), Smoke Stacks, Fortune cover published September 1937. Gouache on board, 17½ x 13½ in., signed lower right.
Works in the show include cover proposals for the New Yorker, including New Year’s Eve Times Square, which shows a gleaming Statue of Liberty rising over Times Square as a celebration commences at street level. The work Play Ball, another New Yorker proposal, shows geometric renderings of baseball players on a loosely painted baseball diamond. Those simple forms and stylized figures and taken a step further in a Vanity Fair proposal in which stick figures with top hats are linked together in a repeating pattern. Petruccelli’s modernist interpretation will figure prominently within the exhibition, which continues through July 16.
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