Luigi Lucioni

Luigi Lucioni was an Italian American painter known for his still lifes, landscapes, and portraits.

Lucioni's work was marketed through Associated American Artists in New York.

Lucioni's portrait of Paul Cadmus was included in the Brooklyn Museum's show "Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties" (winter 2010-2011) and was reproduced for the show's poster.

In 1938, Lucioni met Ethel Waters through their mutual friend, Carl Van Vechten. After several months, Lucioni asked Waters if he could paint her portrait and she readily agreed so a sitting was arranged at his studio on Washington Square. Waters bought the finished portrait from Lucioni in 1939 for $500. Waters was at the height of her career in 1939, at that time, she was the first African American to have a starring role on Broadway and was already a jazz and blues legend. In her portrait, Waters wears a beautifully tailored red dress with an elegant mink coat draped over the back of her chair. Not until one actually views this portrait in person can one feel the human emotion that Lucioni so deftly articulated on canvas. He positioned Waters with her arms tightly wrapped around her waist, a gesture that conveys a sense of vulnerability as if she were trying to protect herself. Intentional or not, this gesture is aptly symbolic of the challenges she faced as an impoverished African American woman growing up in a social climate of racial and gender discrimination.

In 2017, the Huntsville Museum of Art (HMA) acquired the historic Portrait of Ethel Waters. HMA Executive Director, Christopher J. Madkour, and Luigi Lucioni Historian, Dr. Stuart Embury, heard of the painting and were able to track down its whereabouts. The painting was thought to be lost since it had not been viewed by the public since 1942, but the two traced it to a private residence in 2016 and learned the family had plans to auction the painting off in the coming months. The owner graciously allowed the Huntsville Museum of Art to display Portrait of Ethel Waters in the exhibition, American Romantic: The Art of Luigi Lucioni, where it was viewed by the public for the first time in over 70 years. The museum successfully negotiated the purchase of Portrait of Ethel Waters and, thanks in large part to the generosity of the Huntsville community, Lucioni's Portrait of Ethel Waters now has a new home at the Huntsville Museum of Art in Huntsville, Alabama where it will be made accessible for public viewing.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023