Oral history interview with Peter Agostini, 1968
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@ Archives of American Art
Bontecou, Lee Cézanne, Paul Chamberlain, John Chryssa Cornell, Joseph De Chirico, Giorgio De Kooning, Willem Demuth, Charles Dove, Arthur Garfield Dubuffet, Jean Duchamp, Marcel Di Suvero, Mark Ferber, Herbert Flannagan, John Bernard Giacometti, Alberto Greenberg, Clement Hague, Raoul Hare, David Hartley, Marsden Hopper, Edward Judd, Donald Kaprow, Allan Kienholz, Edward Kline, Franz Kohn, Gabriel Lachaise, Gaston Lassaw, Ibram La Tour, Onya Lippold, Richard Lipton, Seymour Macdonald-Wright, Stanton Maillol, Aristide Manship, Paul Marca-Relli, Conrad Marin, John Marisol Matisse, Henri Mondrian, Piet Morris, Robert Nakian, Reuben Noguchi, Isamu O'Keeffe, Georgia Oldenburg, Claes Pollock, Jackson Pompon, François Reinhardt, Ad Rivera, Diego Roszak, Theodore Rothko, Mark Samaras, Lucas Scarpitta, Salvatore Segal, George Sheeler, Charles Smith, David Smith, Tony Spaventa, George Stankiewicz, Richard Sugarman, George Tobey, Mark Zorach, William Poe, Edgar Allan Whitman, Walt Kolbe, Georg Melville, Herman Columbia University United States. Works Progress Administration
Description
New York (State)99 Pages, TranscriptOriginally recorded on 3 sound tape reels. Reformatted in 2010 as 28 digital wav files. Duration is 10 hrs., 37 min. Transferred from 4 3" reels.An interview of Peter Agostini conducted in 1968, by Colette Roberts, for the Archives of American Art at 151 Avenue B, New York, New York. Mr. Agostini speaks of his childhood spent living throughout the five boroughs of New York; his interactions with clients of his father's acting employment agency; his early education in Catholic school and the creative freedom allotted by the nuns; his first feelings of isolation as an artist at the age of seven; the development of a sense of communication as the result of the loss of his mother at the age of three and time spent at a school for orphans; his early realization and vision of artistic destiny; his religious interests which lead to mysticism in his earlier work; his time spent working freely in the DaVinci Studio with Spaventa; the discovery by Hess of his works in Gallerie Grimaud; his attainment of the Longview Grant; his working experience throughout the Depression as part of the WPA casting plaster mannequins while working indirectly with Pollack as well as Marca Relli; his subsequent move to designing department store windows (use of Mondrian-like forms and lines); his feelings of his position as an observer; the importance of communication through art (communication without words); his rejection of the Abstract Expressionist group and choice of independence; the influence of...
Record Contributed By
Archives of American Art
Record Harvested From
Smithsonian Institution
