Salvatore Del Deo



Flyer's Boatyard, 2006, Oil on canvas, 40 x 48"
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Salvatore Del Deo is a painter engaged in a spirited dialogue with his work, responding to the deep questions presented by the paintings themselves. It is this challenge that has held Del Deo's passion through the over fifty years of his painting career and has resulted in an immense and diverse body of work. His is a style that seems to traverse the continuum from the realistic to the abstract, with a natural fluidity available only to one who is thoroughly centered. Del Deo has painted all the familiar scenes of his life at land's end – fish, dunes, figures on the back beach, boats moored at the town wharf, trap sheds and lighthouses – made new for the viewer through the painter's rich palette and soulful perspective. It is as if he is focusing long-stored energy through the lens of pure color – the color concentrated, coagulated by that intense focus.

"Commitment, integrity and passion. Drawing and the sweet labors of painting, composition and color – all these ingredients are combined to make the face and being of the artist Salvatore Del Deo."
        –Varujan Boghosian, Sculptor.

Del Deo has made paintings based on the here and now and also near-abstract works that engage the 'metaphysical unreal'. He is an artist of subtle sensibility."
        –Eleanor Munroe, Art Critic.

"I cannot separate Sal Del Deo, the man, from his art. Sal lives his art. That's why he is whole."
        –Edward Giobbi, Painter

Salvatore Del Deo grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and attended the Rhode Island School of Design, the Vesper George School of Art in Boston, and the Art Students League in New York, where he studied with Edwin Dickinson and John McPherson. As a young painter, he began attending Henry Hensche's summer classes in Provincetown, setting up his easel on the bay beach. In 1954, Del Deo settled permanently in Provincetown.

In Provincetown, Del Deo is known for his magnanimous hospitality, famous Italian dinners, homemade wine, and, above all, for his tireless community involvement. The restaurant he started "to keep him in paint," Sal's Place, has become an institution. Del Deo has exhibited in New York at Helio Galleries and in Providence, Cambridge and Boston. His paintings are in the Nat

ional Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, Harvard University, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Williams College Museum of Art, among others.