Gallery talk closes retrospective by noted painter Nicoletti
Celebrating the last few days of the exhibition Joseph Nicoletti: A Retrospective, this acclaimed realist painter and Bates College faculty member offers a gallery talk at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 23, in the Bates College Museum of Art, Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.
“I want to be provoked by thoughtful questions rather than to deliver a formal lecture” at the event, says the artist. The event is open to the public at no cost. A reception follows. For more information, please call 207-786-6158.
The exhibition closes Sept. 25. “Nicoletti’s images are beautiful, subtle and complex, rich with references to art history,” says exhibition organizer Anthony Shostak, museum education curator. “He is deeply concerned with beauty, and takes pains to make each image special.”
The 60 paintings and drawings in the exhibition come from the museum’s collection, other museums and private collections, and from Nicoletti himself. An accompanying catalog features an essay by eminent art historian Jeffrey Muller, professor of history of art and architecture at Brown University.
A lecturer in the art and visual culture department, Nicoletti has taught at Bates since 1981. The museum has shown his work previously, but this exhibition is Bates’ first retrospective dedicated to his work.
Born in 1948 in Toritto, Italy, Nicoletti earned a master’s degree in fine arts from Yale University in 1972 and a bachelor’s degree from Queens College in New York.
He has exhibited internationally, and his work is in major collections including that of the Portland Museum of Art, where he participated in this year’s Objects of Wonder exhibit. He has had solo exhibitions at Chase Gallery in Boston, at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and at the Greenhut, Barridoff and Gleason galleries in Portland.
In Maine, his numerous commissions include Percent for Art projects at the Maine State Police Crime Laboratory and at Deering High School in Portland, and the official portrait of Gov. Joseph Brennan.
