Edward Giobbi (American born 1926)

Edward (Giaochino) Giobbi was born in 1926 in Katonah, New York. and grew up in Waterbury, Connecticut during the Great Depression.  His poor, blue collar Italian immigrant family didnt have money for books but young Edward has heard many stories about the great Italian artists. Listening to proudly animated stories about Cimabue, Giotto, Brunelleschi and da Vinci in his native tongue made him decide to become an artist.  After surviving the war as an infantry man, he began his formal art studies.  Following five years of art schooling in Boston, Provincetown and New York he moved to Italy in 1951.

In Florence he studied fresco painting and sculpture while embracing his ancestral cultural heritage.
In 1954 he returned to New York and became surrounded by Abstract Expressionism.  Although he worked and exhibited with the Abstract Expressionists and was artistically pressured by them, he remained open to the influences of classic Italian art.  "It was senseless for me to give up Giotto and Masaccio for Gorkey and Pollack. I felt that I could learn from them all."

In 1986, his personal friend Robert Motherwell declared to him that he was the only painter Motherwell knew who successfully combined the quattrocento with modern art.

Studies:
Whitney School of Art - 1946
Vesper Giorge School of Art - 1946/1950
Cape School of Art - 1946/1950
Art Students League - 1950/51 - 1955
Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze - 1951/1954
Ford Foundation Grant - 1965
Guggenheim Fellowship - 1972/1973
Artist Residence - Dartmouth College 1973

Select One Man Shows:
Ascoli Piceno, Sala dei Mercatori, Italy
Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AK
American Embassy, London, UK
Artist Gallery, NY, NY
Brooks Memorial Gallery, Memphis, TN
Certaldo, Palazzo Pretorio, Italy
Galerie An Der Ruess, Lucerne, Switzerland
Galleria Obelisco, Rome, Italy
Gross McLeaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Hood Museum, Darthmouth College, NH
Hudson River Museum, Westchester, NY
Irving Gallery, Palm Beach, FL
Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY
Memphis Academy of Art, Memphis, TN
Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY
New Art Centre, London, UK 
Norton Gallery, Palm Beach, FL
Palazzo Medici, Florence, Italy
St. Peter Church, NY, NY
The New Art Centre, London, England
Norton Gallery, Palm Beach, FL
Waddell Gallery, NY, NY

Select Group Shows:
Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY
Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art, Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Everhart Museum, Scranton, PA
Longpoint Gallery, Provincetown, MA
MoMA, NY, NY
National Academy of Arts and Letters, NY, NY
National Academy of Design, NY, NY
Quadriennale Nazionale DArte Di Roma, Rome, Italy
San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Whitney Museum, NY, NY

Public Collections
Accademia di Belle Arti, Firenze, Italy
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA
The Art Institute oc Chicago, Chicago, IL
Art Students League, NY, NY
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY
Brooks Memorial Gallery, Memphis, TN
Contemporary Arts Society, London, England
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.
Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH
Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Magdalen College, Cambridge, England
Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX
The Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, CT
Michelson Museum of Art, Marshall, TX
National Academy of Design, NY, NY
Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY
New Britian Museum of American Art, New Britian, CT
Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach, FL
Poole Technical College, Dorset, England
Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA
St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, England
Spelman College Musuem of Art, Atlanta, GA
Tate Gallery, London, England
University of Nebraska, Omaha, NE
Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, NY
Williams College Musuem of Art, Williamstown, MA

Source:
The artists website