After being in the arts for the past 50 years it’s a strange happening to stumble upon an artist that you’ve never heard of….especially one whose work stands out among his contemporaries who were some of the most influential artists of the period.
The artist, Achillo Sullo known as “Achi”, was a first-generation Italian born in Boston in 1922, served four years in the Army Engineering Corps and was a WWII D-Day survivor. He began his artistic career painting camouflage patterns on Army vehicles along with Ellsworth Kelly who was also in the Engineers Camouflage Battalion.
The GI Bill enabled Sullo to attend The Boston Museum School of Fine Arts for four years with a fifth year in Italy and France graduating in 1949. Classmate Cy Twombly also graduated from the Museum School in 1949 and Ellsworth Kelly attended in 1948-49.
Sullo’s only known museum exhibition was a one-man show at the deCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts in November 1958 titled “Roxbury Pastorals, Paintings and Drawings”. This exhibition was organized by the oldest museum in southern California, “The Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego” founded in 1926 and in 1978 they change their name to the San Diego Museum of Art. Sullo did exhibit back in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s at Boston’s Dunbarton Galleries and the Stanhope Gallery along with being included in the important exhibition titled “20/20: 20 Alumni From 20 Years” at the Boston Museum School Gallery in April 1963.
Sullo, a recluse, maintained a studio in Roxbury for the next 30 years and never tried to sell his work as it was his personal medicine.
The small group of works we have acquired seem to be something left in an abandoned studio where time has stopped or the artist has gone out for a bite to eat….but these period works are sophisticated and reek of intelligence and originality along with an organic form of design and every time I observe them they continue to reveal themselves in a chameleon-esq manner.
I do hope you enjoy this rare collection by an artist who deserves our attention.