With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
Anthony & Stephanie Terenzio
Education/Curation, Painting/Drawing
1923 – 2000
Anthony was a painter and art teacher at the University of Connecticut, while Stephanie brought the work of important modernist artists to the William Benton Museum where she was curator.
- Biography/Description of Work
A native Italian, Terenzio emigrated with his parents to the US at age 12. After growing up in Stamford Connecticut, he moved to Brooklyn and studied painting at Pratt Institute. His studies were interrupted by wartime service, but received a BFA from Pratt upon his return. In 1943 Terenzio broke off his study to join the army and do wartime service in Europe, returning again to Pratt after the War to complete his BFA. Between the end of the War and the mid 1950s, Terenzio began to be known in the New York art world. Upon his marriage in 1955 to a fellow artist, he took a teaching position at the University of Connecticut and the couple moved to Mansfield, where they remained many years before moving to Coventry c.1989.
While Tony taught and worked in his studio, his wife Stephanie Samek Terenzio (1932-1999), a native of Hartford, became involved with the nascent William Benton Museum in Storrs c.1967. She organized exhibitions of Milton Avery, a modern painter of stylized forms and swaths of color, in 1976, and Abstract Expressionist Robert Motherwell in 1979. Stephanie wrote the catalog ‘Motherwell and Black’ in 1969, and became friendly with the artist. She guest curated a show of Motherwell’s prints at MoMA in 1980, and in 1984 produced a catalog raisonné of his graphic work.
- Sources view
- http://mysticarts.org/entry/maad-men-of-mystic/
http://bensonstudio.com/Terenzio%20print%20pages/FP-terenzio-bio.html - Associated Resource(s)