Gallery Devotes All Space to Edward Boccia Career Retrospective

Philip Slein Gallery is using every room for a single exhibition.

The show, titled Edward E. Boccia: An American Modernist, opens October 23 and runs through December 19. It is the first time in the gallery's 23-year history that the entire space is dedicated to one artist.

The gallery at 4735 McPherson Avenue usually limits individual shows to the front room. For Boccia, who lived in St. Louis for 60 years, the owner extended the installation to the hallway and the back room. Philip Slein called the show large in scale. He noted that only an institutional venue could hold a larger survey.

Boccia was born in New Jersey in 1921 to Italian parents. He served in the World War II Ghost Army before studying at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League in New York. He earned degrees from Columbia University after returning from the war.

He joined the faculty at Washington University in 1951. He taught there for more than 30 years and retired in 1986 as professor emeritus. Art historian Rosa Berland described his teaching style as rigorous. She said he encouraged students to find their own creative direction.

The exhibition includes more than 30 paintings. The front room displays his largest works. These include the nine-panel autobiographical piece Eugene's Journey. It also features the 2004 triptych David's Death, one of several works addressing the death of his son.

The hallway contains scenes of ocean voyages. The figures in these paintings appear to glow with internal light. The final room features a salon wall. This arrangement tracks his artistic development from a 1950s portrait to a work painted in 2012. That final piece was created shortly before his death in 2012 at age 91.

Berland wrote a companion book titled Edward E. Boccia: Painter of Nightmares and Dreams. Hirmer will publish it during the exhibition run. The book is the first major monograph on the artist. It is based on 14 years of research and includes fold-out plates of his multi-panel works.

Berland described Boccia as a polymath who studied philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis and history. A pamphlet for the show quotes Boccia: "Don't worry about what my art means. Just experience it." Berland also credited Morton D. May as Boccia's greatest patron.

Berland said the work demands active engagement from viewers. She compared the experience of viewing the paintings to reading a poem or a philosophical text.