Faculty scholar: Sattler named inaugural SACI Artist-in-Residence

Paul Sattler, the Ella Van Dyke Professor of Art and director of Skidmore’s Schick Art Gallery, is the inaugural recipient of the Consortium Artist/Scholar Residency from the Studio Art Centers International (SACI) of Florence, Italy. He will spend the month of June in Florence—one of the world’s great art cities—interacting with SACI’s faculty and students and participate in diverse school activities. He will also deliver a visiting artist lecture at the International Centre for the Arts in Monte Castello di Vibio, Italy.

In addition to a residence, Sattler will receive studio space at SACI and access to the SACI Worthington Library, and will have the opportunity to participate in SACI field trips to Pisa, Lucca, San Gimignano, Siena, Fiesole, Arezzo and other important sites in Tuscany.

Sattler said he will devote time during the residency “to observational painting in and around Florence and Tuscany,” he said. In addition, he has a second goal: to research and produce preparatory work for a series of paintings inspired by the life and music of the composer Carlo Gesualdo (1560-1613).”

According to Sattler, “Gesualdo was an extremely innovative late-Renaissance composer of madrigals of tremendous beauty and power.  Revered by the likes of Igor Stravinsky, he was also a very controversial figure, riddled with violence, paranoia and personal demons – including a jealousy-fueled murder of his wife and her lover. During my stay, I would make a sojourn to the town of Gesualdo, Campania, visit the “scene of crime,” his castle and the surrounding landscape that will prove to be the visual basis for much of the potential painted work.  For example, one of the most provocative Gesualdo myths involves him singlehandedly chopping down acres of trees surrounding his castle to keep an unobstructed view of potential intruders.”

An abiding passion for light, space, and color guides Sattler’s work. Visual phenomena of the natural world, a strong engagement with art history, and a love for the tools and techniques of the studio motivate his paintings, while aspects of his personal history provide a framework for invention.

His recent exhibitions have included Big and Bold at the Albany Institute of History and Art, which featured works from the museum’s permanent collection, and the 2013 Selected Faculty Art Exhibition at Skidmore’s Schick Art Gallery. In 2006 Sattler received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

Sattler received an M.F.A. from Indiana University at Bloomington in 1994 and a B.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1991. His work has been shown extensively in this region and beyond, including exhibitions at Alpha Gallery in Boston and at Gerald Peters Gallery in New York. Sattler has been teaching drawing and painting at Skidmore since 1998.

According to its web site, “SACI is the oldest and most prestigious American art school in Florence. The institution was founded in 1975by painter Jules Maidoff, whose goal was to offer the finest and most challenging training to the next generation of artists, art historians, and art conservators, as well as the opportunity to live out a full, first-hand immersion within Florentine culture and customs.”

[Florence, Looking West (Via dei Pandolfini) 19" x 23" by Paul Sattler, is casein and gouache on board, 200]