Frank Strazzulla
Frank Strazzulla, Jr. was born in Quincy, Massachusetts. A New England painter, Strazzulla graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1980. During attendance, Strazzulla traveled to the University of London for a summer program
and to a Boston University summer program in Florence, Italy. Remembering his first stay in Florence, Strazzulla called Florence a city where "one century rubs shoulders with another."
"One must study the old Masters, but be careful not to let their spirit absorb your own."
-- Frank Strazzulla, Jr.
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After the summer program, Strazzulla then became part of a graduate program at the esteemed Villa Schifanoia in Florence, but perhaps more importantly, made a friendship there with classical realist Ben Long, who was painting in Italy at the time. At Long's suggestion, Strazzulla enrolled in the respected Studio Cecil-Graves in Florence, where he learned to work in cast drawing, grind his own pigments and build panels and canvasses in the nineteenth century Parisian atelier method. After time spent at the Studio, Strazzulla returned to the United States and Boston, where he found another mentor in Robert Cormier, who became President of the Guild of Boston Artists. Strazzulla has always had an intense appreciation for the old Master painters. His advice to young painters starting out is to study "the old Masters, but be careful not to let their spirit absorb your own."
For such a young artist, Strazzulla's career is in full bloom. He has shown extensively throughout the South, Midwest and North of America, as well as in Florence. He is collected in the Hilstead Museum in Farmington, Connecticut and has a large private patronage. Strazzulla's awards include third place for painting in a student exhibit at the Copley Society in Boston in 1989, a Third Place Award for Painting, Sculpture and Large works Exhibit, again by the Copley Society in 1991, and a J. Gazzola Award for Excellence by the Fall Members Exhibit of the Copley Society in 1996.
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Realists
