Anthony Panzera

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Anthony Panzera’s works have been exhibited widely in the United States and abroad for the past 45 years. He is a recently retired professor of art at New York’s Hunter College where he taught since 1968. Panzera also taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, The New York Academy of Art, Manhattanville College, Brooklyn College and the Newark Museum. From 1978 to 1996, he was co-director of the Art in Florence and Rome Programs in Italy.

In addition to formal studies, two very different places have influenced him and his realistic works: Florence, Italy, and Nantucket, Massachusetts. In 1975, while on a sabbatical leave, he lived with his family in Florence, Italy. The experience – and an independent study of the works and methods of the great Italian masters, particularly the works of the Renaissance Florentine painters – had a powerful impact on his figurative art. Back in the states, he continued to immerse himself in the study of anatomy and proportion. While primarily a figurative painter, he was captivated by Nantucket’s serene simplicity and began painting, en plein air, its seascapes, landscapes and vistas.

Panzera’s oeuvre consists of series of nudes, portraits and still lifes. They range from The Leonardo Series, 65 drawings depicting the proportional studies of Leonardo da Vinci, to life-size figure scroll drawings, to paintings of scenes from the life of Victorine Meurent, to back views of nudes, after the German genre, “Gessas Aesthetic,” to the most recent allegorical Memento Mori paintings.

Recent exhibitions include the 2015 exhibition “Memento Mori Paintings, Because I Could Not Stop For death…” at the Leubsdorf Gallery at Hunter College, CUNY, a 2012 show at the Samuel Dorsky Museum, SUNY, New Paltz, N.Y., which featured a major comprehensive exhibition of Panzera’s work, The Leonardo Series: 65 Drawings Based on the Work of Leonardo da Vinci, which led to the 2015 publication of the book by the SUNY Press., and also in 2012, Studio 7 Fine Art Gallery, Bernardsville, N.J., featured a retrospective of Panzera’a work.

His roster of one-man shows also includes exhibits at the Everson Museum, Syracuse, N.Y.; the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, N.J.; The Richmond University Museum, Richmond, Va.; the Virginia Beach Center for the Arts, Virginia Beach, Va.; The Maitland Art Center, Maitland, Fla.; the Hickory Museum, Hickory, N.C., Bates College Gallery, Lewiston, Maine; the Nelson Fine Arts Center, Tempe, Ariz.; The Asheville Academy of Art in Asheville, N.C., Quidley & Co. Gallery, Boston and Nantucket, and the Elizabeth Eisenhauer Gallery, Martha’s Vineyard. In addition, two prominent articles on Panzera’s art were featured in Drawing Magazine in the Fall 2005 and Winter 2009 editions.

Panzera’s works have been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including shows at The Newark Museum, Newark, N.J.; and The National Academy Museum, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, the Art Students League, Hunter College Galleries, and The Painting Center, all in New York City. In Europe, he showed in the Museo Civico, Taverna, Italy, and Museum Architektury, Warsaw, Poland. In early 2010, he exhibited works of the figure in a show he curated, The Human Form, at Studio 7 Gallery, Bernardsville, N.J. His work was also represented in the National Academy Annual: 2015 Exhibition, as well as in group shows at Quidley & Company, Boston in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.

He is represented in the permanent collections of The National Academy Museum, New York, N.Y.; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, N.Y.; The Richmond University Museum, Richmond, Va.; The Hickory Museum of Art, Hickory, N.C.; The Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute, Utica, N.Y.; The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, N.J.; The Museum of Art, Bates College, Lewiston, Me; The Bristol-Myers Squibb Collection, Princeton, N.J.; The Johnson & Johnson Collection, New Brunswick, N.J.; The Rutgers Center for Innovative Printmaking, New Brunswick, N.J.; The Century Association, New York, N.Y., and numerous private collections in the United States and abroad.

Panzera was elected a member of the National Academy in 1995. He is also a recipient of many awards and honors, including grants from the CUNY Research Foundation, the New Jersey Council for the Arts and the Michigan State Council on the Arts. He has curated numerous exhibits and written catalogue essays, most notably, for an exhibition of William Starkweather’s watercolors at the Leubsdorf Gallery of Hunter College Galleries and at the Tides Institute in Eastport, Maine, in 2007, and a retrospective of the works of Vincent Longo at the Hunter College Gallery, New York, in 2003. He is also a regular contributor to several New York art publications.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1941, Panzera is a graduate of the State University of New York at New Paltz, N.Y., where he received a Bachelor’s Degree in 1963. He was awarded a Master of Fine Arts degree from Southern Illinois Undiversity, Carbondale, Ill., in 1967, and in 1975-1976 did a year of independent study in Florence, Italy.

He lives in Mendham, N.J. and is a frequent visitor to Nantucket, the Cape islands, and Italy.