Family portraits

 

Professional portrait painters Robert and Joseph Maniscalco to hold exhibit

 

By K. Michelle Moran

Arts & Entertainment Editor

     Two generations of painters — and paintings — will come together this weekend at the Maniscalco Gallery in Grosse Pointe City.

     Gallery owner, portrait painter and fine artist Robert Maniscalco of Grosse Pointe City and his father, renowned portrait painter Joseph Maniscalco, are the subject of the two-person show “Father & Son: A Portrait Retrospective,” June 25 to July 31 at the younger Maniscalco’s gallery. It’s the first time their works will be hung side-by-side for a full exhibit, and the first time the gallery has hosted a portraits-only show.

     The works, on loan from private collectors, aren’t for sale, but demonstrate a creative lineage passed from father to son. Robert hopes the show engenders greater appreciation for portraiture, a tradition of realist art his father carried on even through an era of abstraction and conceptualism.

     “For me, [the exhibit] was sort of to celebrate, and as a tribute to, my father’s career as a portrait artist,” Robert explained.

     A professional painter now for almost 60 years, Joseph Maniscalco seemed fated to become an artist. He was born in Tampa, Fla., to an Italian immigrant, Michaelangelo Maniscalco, and when Joseph was 9, the family moved to New York City. He earned his first commission at 15, when a neighbor in his apartment building offered the teen $5 to paint his portrait. The top artist at his high school, Joseph earned a scholarship to New York’s acclaimed Art Students League, and as an adult did everything from movie posters to automotive imagery for art studios before becoming a full-time portrait painter and fine artist in 1968.

     “From the time I was a little kid, I started drawing heads of people, and I didn’t do the usual egg-shaped head, with triangles for the eyes and a triangle for the nose and a curving, smiling [mouth],” Joseph said. “I tried to do them realistically, [because] that’s the way I saw them. I was very conscious of forms and how they turned three-dimensional. I knew that a nose should have a side plane and a top plane, and a face has a front plane and a side plane.”

     A former president of Detroit’s Scarab Club and winner of three gold medals from the annual Scarab Club Gold Medal exhibition and first prize at the club’s Silver Medal Show, Joseph’s portraits adorn places of honor around the world. He’s been commissioned to paint Michigan Supreme Court Justices Dorothy Comstock Riley and Thomas Brennan, Congressman John D. Dingell, former Detroit Institute of Arts Director Fred Cummings, and hockey greats Gordie Howe and Steve Yzerman, among many others.

     Like his father, Robert, the youngest of Joseph’s four children, developed a keen interest in art as a child. He used to sit in his father’s lap as the elder Maniscalco worked, and sometimes Robert added his own touches to the background. His father became Robert’s first teacher, and as his student, Robert learned technique, commitment to art as a profession, and the “exceptional feel for human beings” that made Joseph’s portraits so personal.

     Instead of being daunted by his father’s success, Robert said he felt empowered being Joseph Maniscalco’s son.

     “Painting, to me, was as natural as sleeping and eating,” Robert said.

     Robert has made forays into other creative fields as well, studying music at Wayne State University and acting in New York. He teaches classes in art and theater out of his gallery, and has painted portraits of many notable figures, including actor Chris Noth, Kowalski Sausage Company President Ronald Kowalski, Michigan Supreme Court Justice Eugene Black and Barnes and Noble President Richard Fontaine.

     Despite his own two decades-plus artistic career, Robert said he’s “still learning” from his father.

     “I’ll always be his apprentice,” Robert said. “I’ve always got more to learn from him.”

     “Father & Son: A Portrait Retrospective” runs June 25 to July 31 at the Maniscalco Gallery, 17728 Mack in Grosse Pointe City. There will be an opening reception from 6-9 p.m. June 25, an artist talk from 2-4 p.m. June 27 and a “Power of Positive Painting Portrait Workshop” with Robert Maniscalco from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. July 17-18. For more information, call the gallery at (313) 886-2993 or visit www.maniscalcogallery.com.

     You can reach K. Michelle Moran at kmoran@candgnews.com