Don DeMauro (Artist)
2018 Festival
The work presented represents a very small sample of more than half a century of commitment to and engagement with the history, concepts and theories of “art” and the parallel creation of the work presented.
I was born at the cusp of a second world war, into a second generation Roman Catholic family that consisted of three brothers, our parents, and myself. It was a family under economic stress and consumed with serious health issues. This particular context of societal and familial breakdown fostered an existentialism that was consistent with and nurtured by my own evolving instinctual philosophical perspective.
This existential perspective, grounded by its opposition to all inherited forms of transcendence was consistent with and key to my own existential formation. Concepts of immanence, singularity, multiplicity and becoming, could and would ground my aesthetic and social choices. It interested me that “art” was a socially functional strategy for the existential impulse.
At this point it is necessary to acknowledge my commitment to the “figure” in my work. Art is language, and the body is the site of language. For myself, the body is by its existential nature nomadic and migrates to the figural. The term figural wants to acknowledge singularity, multiplicity, form, boundaries and becoming. Art is for myself equally anatomical and political, personal and social. The body is the site of conception and sensation. Art, and here I will include drawing, mediates and interprets through line, shape, plane, tone and color, the internal and external intensities of boundaries and their entanglements.
Finally, these works were determined by the inherent questions of presentation and representation of inclusion and exclusion. The dialectical tension of the questions raised imply the responsibility and choice necessary for aesthetic and social formation.
In the end these works—these things presented and represented—need to be made well enough and then nurtured, so that the work speaks for itself. Visual art wants to give physical matter its own sensate logic—a voice.
BIO
EDUCATION:
1955 Sacramento Junior College, California 1960 Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles
AWARDS:
1984 F. Lammot Berlin Arts Scholorship
1983 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship 1978 SUNY Research Award Grant
1977 SUNY Research Award Grant
1972 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
1970-Present Associate Professor of Art, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY
COLLECTIONS:
Brooklyn Museum
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York Library of Congress
Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania Roberson Museum and Science Center, Binghamton, New York
Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, Florida
UCLA Grunwald Collection, Dickinson Art Center, Los Angeles University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:
2006 Resume:Resume, Spool MFG., Johnson City, New York
2006 Amnesties: a Multimedia colletion of Contemporary Works, Spool MFG., Johnson City, New York 2005 Transmigration – Don DeMauro: Painting , Ron Gonzales: Sculpture, Ken Jacobs: Film
Roberson Museum and Science Center, Binghamton, NY (Catlog Essays by Carol Gordon
Wood, Thomas McDonogh and Steven Luckert
2002 Group show, Paul Ickovic Gallery, Southampton, New York
2001 Ruin & Representation, Painting & Sculpture, La MaMa E.T.C Galleria, New York, New York 2001 Recent Works, String Room Gallery, Wells College, Aurora, New York
2000 New York Vision 2000, Artists Exposed, Merrick Gallery, St. Petersburg, Florida
1999 Faculty Exhibition, University Art Museum, Binghamton University, New York
1997 Faculty Exhibition, University Art Museum, Binghamton University, New York
1996 Faculty Exhibition, University Art Museum, Binghamton University, New York
1994 Working with Tradition, New York State Museum, Albany, NY
1993 Working with Tradition, Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Buffalo State College, New York
1990 SUNY Art Now, New Visions Gallery, Ithaca, New York
1991 Gifts and Fragments, Roberson Museum and Science Center, Binghamton, New York
1998 Don DeMauro: Solo Exhibition, University Art Musuem, SUNY at Binghamton, New York
1986 Works on Paper, Elizabeth Myers Mitchell Art Gallery, St John’s College, Annapolis, Maryland 1984 Don DeMauro: Paintings & Drawings, Allan Stone Gallery, New York, New York
1983 Recent Works, University Art Museum, State University of New York at Binghamton, New York 1981 Prints from the Permanent Collection, Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, New York 1980 American Portrait Drawings, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.
On/Of paper, Visual Arts Center, Anchorage, Alaska
18th National Bradley Print Show, Lakeview Museum of Arts and Sciences, Peoria, Illinois Mid-America Art Exhibition, Owensboro Museum of Fine Art, Kentucky ( curated by Hilton
Kramer, The New York Times)
West ’80: Art and the Law, Minnesota Museum of Art, Saint Paul, Minnesota
1979 Faculty Exhibition, University Art Museum, State University of New York at Binghamton, NY Vermillion ’79, The University of South Dakota, College of Fine Arts, Vermillion, South Dakota
1978 faculty Exhibition, University Art Museum, State University of New York at Binghamton, NY 1977 Don DeMauro: Retrospective, University Art Museum, State University at Binghamton, New
York, ( catalog by Fred Mitchell; essays by Albert Boime and Frabcois Bucher)
Faculty Exhibition, University Art Museum, State University of New York at Binghamton, NY 1976 Faculty Exhibition, University Art Museum, State University of New York at Binghamton, NY
1975 Drawings U.S.A. ’75, Minnesota Museum of Art, Saint Paul Minnesota (National Tour 1976-77) Five Pennsylvania painters, Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania Conflict/Contrast/Composition, Terrain Gallery, New York, New York
Faculty Exhibition, University Art Museum, State University of New York at Binghamton, NY National Invitational Drawings Exhibition: Works by College and University Instructors,
Mitchell Gallery, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (Purchase Award)
15th National Bradley Print Show, Lakeview Museum of Arts and Sciences, Peoria, Illinois
21st Annual Drawings and Small Sculpture Show, Ball State University Museum of Art, Muncie,
Indiana
1974 The Figure in Contemporary Art: Living American Artists and the Figure, Palmer Museum of art,
Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania
Faculty Exhibition, University Art Museum, State University of New York at Binghamton, NY Drawings, Cramer Gallery, Glen Rock, New Jersey
Folio Seventy-Three, an international exhibition of prints organized by the California College of
Art and Crafts World Print Competition in cooperation with the San Francisco Museum of
Art (Traveled the United States, Japan, and the Far East; Purchased Award) 1973 Don DeMauro: Recent Works, Cramer Gallery, Glen Rock, New Jersey
Faculty Exhibition, University Art Museum, State University of New York at Binghamton, NY Davidson National Print and Drawing Competition, Davidson College, North Carolina
Self Portraits, Associated American Artists, New York, New York
25th Annual National Boston Printmakers Exhibition, Decordova Museum, Boston, Massachusettes Society of American Graphic Artists 52nd National Exhibition, Associated American Artists, New
New York and Van Stratten Galleries, Chicago, Illinois
1972 The 18th Annual Print Biennial Exhibition, Brooklyn Museum, New York (Purchase Award)
Faculty Exhibition, University Art Museum, State University of New York at Binghamton, NY
Drawings from the Museum’s Permanent Collection, Brooklyn Museum, New York
1970 Faculty Exhibition, University Art Museum, State University of New York at Binghamton, NY 1965 Decade of American Drawings, Whitney Museum, New York, New York
Don DeMauro: Recent Works, Roko Gallery, New York, New York