Untitled Abstract by Angelo Savelli

Angelo Savelli was born in 1911 in Pizzo Calabria, Italy. He left Paris in 1954. to come to the United States. He exhibited at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1958 and in 1964 at the Venice Biennale.

In 1962 “G. Holmes Perkins, president of the University of Pennsylvania, and influential architect Louis Kahn, a University alumnus, decide to modernize the school, appointing as teachers important experts of the new generation. Romoaldo Giurgola, an Italian architect living in America, suggests they invite Angelo Savelli and his old Via Margutta friend Piero Dorazio to reorganize the study program for the Department of Fine Arts – painting, sculpture and graphics. Savelli accepts and moves to Pennsylvania. He supervises all the activities of the students – who consider him a most charismatic figure – giving them practical help in their working choices. He is a great authority on technique, painting and drawing, and his ability as Maestro is well known among young American artists. In a short time the university becomes the best school of arts in the USA.” – Angelo Savelli Biography – Website.

In 1980 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, which allowed him to live in Europe and organize personal exhibitions in Milan, Zurich and Rome. In 1983 he received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He passed away in Italy in 1995.