Painting is an adventure into the unknown. It’s about finding a balance between spontaneity and control, between chaos and order.
— Giorgio Cavallon
Painting is an adventure into the unknown. It’s about finding a balance between spontaneity and control, between chaos and order.
— Giorgio Cavallon
Biography
Giorgio Cavallon (1904-1989) was an Italian-American artist, one of the founders of the American Abstract Artists group and an important member of the Abstract Expressionism movement.
Cavallon was born in Sorio (Italy) in 1904 and moved to the United States when he was sixteen. In 1926, he settled in New York, where he attended the National Academy of Design, meeting important artists like Ilya Bolotowsky, Lee Krasner, and others. He spent a couple of summers in Provincetown studying with Charles Hawthorne, who taught him how to work directly with color.
In 1929, he received a Louis Comfort Tiffany fellowship that guaranteed him living quarters and a studio space. During the Depression, Cavallon returned to Italy where he stayed for three years. Back to New York, he started to study drawing with Hans Hofmann.
In 1936 Cavallon joined other like-minded artists in founding the American Abstract Artists group, with whom he exhibited until 1957. In 1946, he joined Charles Egan’s gallery and had his first one-man show in eleven years.
After Egan’s gallery closed, Giorgio Cavallon exhibited at Stable Gallery and at Kootz Gallery in New York. He taught briefly at the University of North Carolina and served as visiting critic in painting at Yale University in 1964.
His work is in the collection of numerous major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.