Ralph Fasanella
Encyclopedia
Ralph Fasanella was a self-taught painter whose large, detailed works depicted urban working life and critiqued post-World War II
America
.
in 1914. He was the third of six children. His father delivered ice to local homes. His mother worked in a neighborhood dress shop drilling holes into buttons, and spent her spare time as an anti-fascist
activist.
Fasanella spent much of his youth delivering ice with his father from a horse-driven wagon. This experience deeply impressed him. He saw his father as representative of all working men, beaten down day after day and struggling for survival. "Fasanella later said that the compositional density of his pictures was influenced by the experience of helping his father deliver ice, which involved removing all the food from customers' refrigerators and arranging it in neatly ordered stacks."
Fasanella's mother was a literate, sensitive, progressive woman. She instilled in Fasanella a strong sense of social justice and political awareness. Fasanella began accompanying his mother when she worked on anti-fascist and trade union
causes. Fasanella also helped his mother publish and distribute a small Italian
-language, anti-fascist newspaper to help support the family.
Joseph Fasanella abandoned his family and returned to Italy
in the 1920s. This increased the influence Fasanella's mother had over young Ralph, but it also led to some behavioral problems.
Fasanella served two stints in reform schools run by the Catholic Church for truancy and running away from home. He later said he was sexually abused ("used as a girl") by the priests. These experiences instilled a deep dislike for authority and reinforced Fasanella's hatred for anything which broke people's spirits. Fasanella later depicted his experience in reform school in a painting titled Lineup at the Protectory 2 (1961). The melancholy image features rows of boys standing at attention, watched over by scowling, ominous-looking priests. Fasanella quit school after the sixth grade.
During the Great Depression
, Fasanella worked as a textile worker in garment factories and as a truck driver. He became a member of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America
(UE) Local 1227 while working as a machinist in Brooklyn
. He became strongly aware of the growing economic and social injustice in the U.S., as well as the plight and powerlessness of the working class.
In late 1930s, Ralph Fasanella volunteered to fight in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
, an American paramilitary force fighting to support the Second Spanish Republic
against the successful fascist rebellion led by General Francisco Franco
.
Fasanella joined the UE staff in 1940. He organized a Western Electric
manufacturing plant in Manhattan
, a Sperry Gyroscope factory, and a number of other electrical equipment and machine plants in and around New York City. One of his later paintings shows a union organizing committee meeting being held in a UE hall.
It was during a UE organizing drive in 1940 that Fasanella first began to draw.http://www.dantealighieri.net/cambridge/AmIta_art.html
Fasanella married Matilda Weiss in 1943. The short-lived marriage ended in 1944.
. A union co-worker suggested that he take up painting as a way to exercise his fingers and ease the pain.
In 1945, Fasanella persuaded the UE to organize painting classes for its members at a local college. He was one of the first members to sign up for classes.
Fasanella became consumed by art, and left labor union organizing to paint full-time. To pay the bills, he pumped gasoline at a service station.
Fasanella's painting focused on city life, men and women at work, union meetings, strikes, sit-ins and baseball games. He quickly developed a style which spoke to workers and the poor through the use of familiar details. Fasanella improvised a quasi-surrealist style, depicting interiors and exteriors or past and future simultaneously. He painted canvases as big as 10 feet across because he envisioned his paintings hanging in large union meeting halls.
" 'I always felt embarrassed by the whole thing,' he said, 'but I had to do it.' "
Fasanella's art was highly improvisational. He never planned out works, and rarely revised them. He said of his 1948 painting May Day, it "just came out of my belly. I never planned it. I don't know how I did it."http://www.dantealighieri.net/cambridge/AmIta_art.html
His first solo show was at the ACA Galleries in New York City in 1948. One of his first sales was to choreographer Jerome Robbins
.
In 1950, Fasanella married Eva Lazorek, a school teacher. They had a son, Marc, and a daughter, Gina.
Fasanella's opinionated, leftist-oriented artwork caused him to be blacklisted among art dealers and galleries during the McCarthy era
. His wife supported him by teaching school.
Fasanella's work, however, remained largely unknown for nearly 30 years. While he was acknowledged within labor and leftist circles, his art remained more of a popular curiosity.
On October 30, 1972, Fasanella appeared on the cover of New York
magazine. The cover depicted him wearing a work shirt and standing in his tiny studio. Accompanying the photo was the headline: "This man pumps gas in the Bronx for a living. He may also be the best primitive painter since Grandma Moses
."http://www.ranknfile-ue.org/uen_0198_fasanella.html
The New York magazine cover catapulted Fasanella to national fame.
Fasanella was happy with his fame, but dismissed descriptions of his work as primitive
. Fasanella said it was not possible to be primitive in a post-industrial society
. Critic John Berger agreed, pointing out Fasanella's left-liberal critique of urban living, "the violence of the daily necessity of the streets .. the way that the density of the working population makes itself felt."
In 1972 he appeared in a major interview, with anchor Patrick Watson, on WNET Channel XIII's groundbreaking newshour The Fifty-First State. This led to the publishers Alfred Knopf and Company, under chief editor Robert Gottlieb, to commission Watson to write the book Fasanella's City, which was richly produced, with superb four-colour reproductions of the artist's work.
Now Fasanella's art began to sell. He appeared on The Dick Cavett Show
and CBS News Sunday Morning
with Charles Kuralt
, and his work appeared in several documentary films (including one about baseball). A large number of exhibits traveled the U.S. His work brought new respect for folk, urban and working-class art, and encouraged the emerging field of labor culture studies.
Fasanella spent three years in Massachusetts in the mid-1970s. He lived in an $18-a-week room at the YMCA
while completing 18 canvases. He produced several very large paintings of New England mill towns, three of which depicted the Lawrence textile strike
of 1912. He also produced a painting of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
, and violent, blood-red image of the assassination of John F. Kennedy
.
In 1986, Ron Carver, a union organizer, founded a non-profit organization called Public Domain to raise money and acquire Fasanella works so that they could be displayed in public rather than private collections. Carver was inspired by Fasanella himself, who declared, "I didn't paint my paintings to hang in some rich guy's living room."http://www.ranknfile-ue.org/uen_0198_fasanella.html
. It was loaned to the United States Congress
, where it hung for years in the Rayburn Office Building in the hearing room of the House Subcommittee on Labor and Education
. Following the 1994 elections, a staffer for the new Republican
majority in Congress had the painting removed from the hearing room and returned to the owners. The work now hangs at the Labor Museum and Learning Center in Flint, Michigan
.
In 1995, Fasanella's 1950 painting, Subway Riders, was installed in the New York City Subway
station at Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street ( trains).
Fasanella's Family Supper is currently on permanent display in the Great Hall at Ellis Island
.
It quickly became apparent that much of the public fascination for Fasanella's work had relied on the political and socio-economic messages they contained rather than their artistic appeal. As those messages fell from favor, Fasanella was abandoned by many of his strongest supporters. As he told one reporter: "The other day, I called an old lefty pal at 1199
(the drug and hospital workers' union) and offered them my stuff. 'Forget it Ralph,' he said to me. 'We don't want your stuff.' "
At his death, however, he had regained a small measure of popularity again. In a press release regarding his death, John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, declared Fasanella to be "a true artist of the people in the tradition of Paul Robeson and Woody Guthrie."http://www.villagevoice.com/art/0224,saltz,35544,13.html
Fasanella is also cited for being able to create deeply detailed works with highly individualized parts, yet unifying these scenes into a coherent single image. "Typically, his paintings have hundreds, if not thousands, of individually painted people and buildings. But Fasanella's people are never individuals. They're always seen en masse."
Some critics have argued that Fasanella's world is one of simplistic nostalgia for a past that never really existed. But his supporters point to the "anger, anxiety and agitation" which can be found not only in some of the subjects he depicts (strikes, sit-ins) but in the subtle details of his canvases (such as the angry marchers in his May Day). "He has done what he set out to do, paint the heroism of the working class in the organizing struggles of the thirties and the forties and the continuing struggles, the joys and sorrows and the hopes that make up the lives of workers and their families."http://www.ranknfile-ue.org/uen_0198_fasanella.html
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Early life
Ralph Fasanella was born to Joseph and Ginevra (Spagnoletti), Italian immigrants, in the Bronx, New York, on Labor DayLabor Day
Labor Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the first Monday in September that celebrates the economic and social contributions of workers.-History:...
in 1914. He was the third of six children. His father delivered ice to local homes. His mother worked in a neighborhood dress shop drilling holes into buttons, and spent her spare time as an anti-fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
activist.
Fasanella spent much of his youth delivering ice with his father from a horse-driven wagon. This experience deeply impressed him. He saw his father as representative of all working men, beaten down day after day and struggling for survival. "Fasanella later said that the compositional density of his pictures was influenced by the experience of helping his father deliver ice, which involved removing all the food from customers' refrigerators and arranging it in neatly ordered stacks."
Fasanella's mother was a literate, sensitive, progressive woman. She instilled in Fasanella a strong sense of social justice and political awareness. Fasanella began accompanying his mother when she worked on anti-fascist and trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
causes. Fasanella also helped his mother publish and distribute a small Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
-language, anti-fascist newspaper to help support the family.
Joseph Fasanella abandoned his family and returned to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
in the 1920s. This increased the influence Fasanella's mother had over young Ralph, but it also led to some behavioral problems.
Fasanella served two stints in reform schools run by the Catholic Church for truancy and running away from home. He later said he was sexually abused ("used as a girl") by the priests. These experiences instilled a deep dislike for authority and reinforced Fasanella's hatred for anything which broke people's spirits. Fasanella later depicted his experience in reform school in a painting titled Lineup at the Protectory 2 (1961). The melancholy image features rows of boys standing at attention, watched over by scowling, ominous-looking priests. Fasanella quit school after the sixth grade.
During the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, Fasanella worked as a textile worker in garment factories and as a truck driver. He became a member of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America
United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America
The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America , is an independent democratic rank-and-file labor union representing workers in both the private and public sectors across the United States....
(UE) Local 1227 while working as a machinist in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
. He became strongly aware of the growing economic and social injustice in the U.S., as well as the plight and powerlessness of the working class.
In late 1930s, Ralph Fasanella volunteered to fight in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
Abraham Lincoln Brigade
The Abraham Lincoln Brigade refers to volunteers from the United States who served in the Spanish Civil War in the International Brigades. They fought for Spanish Republican forces against Franco and the Spanish Nationalists....
, an American paramilitary force fighting to support the Second Spanish Republic
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
against the successful fascist rebellion led by General Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
.
Union organizing career
After the Spanish Civil War, Fasanella returned to the United States, where he began organizing labor unions.Fasanella joined the UE staff in 1940. He organized a Western Electric
Western Electric
Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995. It was the scene of a number of technological innovations and also some seminal developments in industrial management...
manufacturing plant in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, a Sperry Gyroscope factory, and a number of other electrical equipment and machine plants in and around New York City. One of his later paintings shows a union organizing committee meeting being held in a UE hall.
It was during a UE organizing drive in 1940 that Fasanella first began to draw.http://www.dantealighieri.net/cambridge/AmIta_art.html
Fasanella married Matilda Weiss in 1943. The short-lived marriage ended in 1944.
Painting career
In the mid-1940s, Fasanella began to suffer from intense finger pain caused by arthritisArthritis
Arthritis is a form of joint disorder that involves inflammation of one or more joints....
. A union co-worker suggested that he take up painting as a way to exercise his fingers and ease the pain.
In 1945, Fasanella persuaded the UE to organize painting classes for its members at a local college. He was one of the first members to sign up for classes.
Fasanella became consumed by art, and left labor union organizing to paint full-time. To pay the bills, he pumped gasoline at a service station.
Fasanella's painting focused on city life, men and women at work, union meetings, strikes, sit-ins and baseball games. He quickly developed a style which spoke to workers and the poor through the use of familiar details. Fasanella improvised a quasi-surrealist style, depicting interiors and exteriors or past and future simultaneously. He painted canvases as big as 10 feet across because he envisioned his paintings hanging in large union meeting halls.
" 'I always felt embarrassed by the whole thing,' he said, 'but I had to do it.' "
Fasanella's art was highly improvisational. He never planned out works, and rarely revised them. He said of his 1948 painting May Day, it "just came out of my belly. I never planned it. I don't know how I did it."http://www.dantealighieri.net/cambridge/AmIta_art.html
His first solo show was at the ACA Galleries in New York City in 1948. One of his first sales was to choreographer Jerome Robbins
Jerome Robbins
Jerome Robbins was an American theater producer, director, and choreographer known primarily for Broadway Theater and Ballet/Dance, but who also occasionally directed films and directed/produced for television. His work has included everything from classical ballet to contemporary musical theater...
.
In 1950, Fasanella married Eva Lazorek, a school teacher. They had a son, Marc, and a daughter, Gina.
Fasanella's opinionated, leftist-oriented artwork caused him to be blacklisted among art dealers and galleries during the McCarthy era
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
. His wife supported him by teaching school.
Fasanella's work, however, remained largely unknown for nearly 30 years. While he was acknowledged within labor and leftist circles, his art remained more of a popular curiosity.
Late public acclaim
A self-proclaimed folk-art dealer "discovered" Fasanella in 1972.On October 30, 1972, Fasanella appeared on the cover of New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
magazine. The cover depicted him wearing a work shirt and standing in his tiny studio. Accompanying the photo was the headline: "This man pumps gas in the Bronx for a living. He may also be the best primitive painter since Grandma Moses
Grandma Moses
Anna Mary Robertson Moses , better known as "Grandma Moses", was a renowned American folk artist. She is often cited as an example of an individual successfully beginning a career in the arts at an advanced age. Although her family and friends called her either "Mother Moses" or "Grandma Moses,"...
."http://www.ranknfile-ue.org/uen_0198_fasanella.html
The New York magazine cover catapulted Fasanella to national fame.
Fasanella was happy with his fame, but dismissed descriptions of his work as primitive
Primitivism
Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics...
. Fasanella said it was not possible to be primitive in a post-industrial society
Post-industrial society
If a nation becomes "post-industrial" it passes through, or dodges, a phase of society predominated by a manufacturing-based economy and moves on to a structure of society based on the provision of information, innovation, finance, and services.-Characteristics:...
. Critic John Berger agreed, pointing out Fasanella's left-liberal critique of urban living, "the violence of the daily necessity of the streets .. the way that the density of the working population makes itself felt."
In 1972 he appeared in a major interview, with anchor Patrick Watson, on WNET Channel XIII's groundbreaking newshour The Fifty-First State. This led to the publishers Alfred Knopf and Company, under chief editor Robert Gottlieb, to commission Watson to write the book Fasanella's City, which was richly produced, with superb four-colour reproductions of the artist's work.
Now Fasanella's art began to sell. He appeared on The Dick Cavett Show
The Dick Cavett Show
The Dick Cavett Show has been the title of several talk shows hosted by Dick Cavett on various television networks, including:* ABC daytime ...
and CBS News Sunday Morning
CBS News Sunday Morning
CBS News Sunday Morning is an American television news magazine program created by Robert Northshield and original host Charles Kuralt. The program has aired continuously since January 28, 1979 on the CBS Television Network, airing in the Eastern US on Sunday from 9:00 to 10:30 a.m...
with Charles Kuralt
Charles Kuralt
Charles Kuralt was an American journalist. He was most widely known for his long career with CBS, first for his "On the Road" segments on The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, and later as the first anchor of CBS News Sunday Morning, a position he held for fifteen years.Kuralt's "On the Road"...
, and his work appeared in several documentary films (including one about baseball). A large number of exhibits traveled the U.S. His work brought new respect for folk, urban and working-class art, and encouraged the emerging field of labor culture studies.
Fasanella spent three years in Massachusetts in the mid-1970s. He lived in an $18-a-week room at the YMCA
YMCA
The Young Men's Christian Association is a worldwide organization of more than 45 million members from 125 national federations affiliated through the World Alliance of YMCAs...
while completing 18 canvases. He produced several very large paintings of New England mill towns, three of which depicted the Lawrence textile strike
Lawrence textile strike
The Lawrence Textile Strike was a strike of immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912 led by the Industrial Workers of the World. Prompted by one mill owner's decision to lower wages when a new law shortening the workweek went into effect in January, the strike spread rapidly through the...
of 1912. He also produced a painting of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg were American communists who were convicted and executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war. The charges related to their passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union...
, and violent, blood-red image of the assassination of John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
.
In 1986, Ron Carver, a union organizer, founded a non-profit organization called Public Domain to raise money and acquire Fasanella works so that they could be displayed in public rather than private collections. Carver was inspired by Fasanella himself, who declared, "I didn't paint my paintings to hang in some rich guy's living room."http://www.ranknfile-ue.org/uen_0198_fasanella.html
Notable public displays
Fasanella's 5-foot by 10-foot painting, "Lawrence 1912: The Great Strike" (also titled "Bread and Roses - Lawrence, 1912") was purchased by donations from 15 labor unions and the AFL-CIOAFL-CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL–CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers...
. It was loaned to the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
, where it hung for years in the Rayburn Office Building in the hearing room of the House Subcommittee on Labor and Education
United States House Committee on Education and the Workforce
The Committee on Education and the Workforce is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives. From 1947 until 1994 and again from 2007 to 2011, during Democratic control of the House, it was known as the Committee on Education and Labor.-History of the Committee:Attempts were...
. Following the 1994 elections, a staffer for the new Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
majority in Congress had the painting removed from the hearing room and returned to the owners. The work now hangs at the Labor Museum and Learning Center in Flint, Michigan
Flint, Michigan
Flint is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and is located along the Flint River, northwest of Detroit. The U.S. Census Bureau reports the 2010 population to be placed at 102,434, making Flint the seventh largest city in Michigan. It is the county seat of Genesee County which lies in the...
.
In 1995, Fasanella's 1950 painting, Subway Riders, was installed in the New York City Subway
New York City Subway
The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the City of New York and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, a subsidiary agency of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and also known as MTA New York City Transit...
station at Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street ( trains).
Fasanella's Family Supper is currently on permanent display in the Great Hall at Ellis Island
Ellis Island
Ellis Island in New York Harbor was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. It was the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly expanded with landfill between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the...
.
Decline of his reputation and death
By the end of his life, many of the causes Fasanella fought for no longer enjoyed public favor or had been lost. Fasanella himself lamented the decline in the relevance of his work. "It's over. What I wanted to do was to paint great big canvases about the spirit we used to have in the movement and then go around the country showing them in union halls. When I started these paintings I had no idea that when they were all finished there wouldn't be any union halls in which to show them."It quickly became apparent that much of the public fascination for Fasanella's work had relied on the political and socio-economic messages they contained rather than their artistic appeal. As those messages fell from favor, Fasanella was abandoned by many of his strongest supporters. As he told one reporter: "The other day, I called an old lefty pal at 1199
1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East
1199SEIU is a local union of the Service Employees International Union. With a membership of 360,000 it claims to be the largest local union in the world.-History:...
(the drug and hospital workers' union) and offered them my stuff. 'Forget it Ralph,' he said to me. 'We don't want your stuff.' "
At his death, however, he had regained a small measure of popularity again. In a press release regarding his death, John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, declared Fasanella to be "a true artist of the people in the tradition of Paul Robeson and Woody Guthrie."http://www.villagevoice.com/art/0224,saltz,35544,13.html
Critical assessment
Critics praise Fasanella for utilizing bold images and strong colors:- His paintings—bold, colorful, loaded with detail yet unified in composition—speak powerfully of a distinct working-class identity and culture, and of the dignity of labor. They capture the past and express hope for the future.http://www.fenimoreartmuseum.org/exhibitions/fasanella.htm
Fasanella is also cited for being able to create deeply detailed works with highly individualized parts, yet unifying these scenes into a coherent single image. "Typically, his paintings have hundreds, if not thousands, of individually painted people and buildings. But Fasanella's people are never individuals. They're always seen en masse."
Some critics have argued that Fasanella's world is one of simplistic nostalgia for a past that never really existed. But his supporters point to the "anger, anxiety and agitation" which can be found not only in some of the subjects he depicts (strikes, sit-ins) but in the subtle details of his canvases (such as the angry marchers in his May Day). "He has done what he set out to do, paint the heroism of the working class in the organizing struggles of the thirties and the forties and the continuing struggles, the joys and sorrows and the hopes that make up the lives of workers and their families."http://www.ranknfile-ue.org/uen_0198_fasanella.html
Current permanent exhibits
Fasanella's paintings may be found in the following permanent collections and public spaces:http://www.bread-and-roses.com/bio.html- Fifth Avenue / 53rd Street subway station ( trains), New York City, NY
- Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA
- Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, NY
- Communications Workers of AmericaCommunications Workers of AmericaCommunications Workers of America is the largest communications and media labor union in the United States representing about 550,000 members in both the private and public sectors. The union has 27 locals in Canada via CWA-SCA Canada representing about 8,000 members...
Headquarters Building, Washington, D.C. - Ellis IslandEllis IslandEllis Island in New York Harbor was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. It was the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly expanded with landfill between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the...
Immigration Museum, Ellis Island, NY - Flint Public Library, Flint, MI
- Heritage State Park Visitors' Center, Lawrence, MA
- Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.
- Labor Museum and Learning Center, Flint, MI
- Lewiston/Auburn College, University of Southern MaineUniversity of Southern MaineThe University of Southern Maine is a multi-campus public urban comprehensive university and part of the University of Maine System. USM's three primary campuses are located in Portland, Gorham, and Lewiston...
, Lewiston, ME - Michigan State UniversityMichigan State UniversityMichigan State University is a public research university in East Lansing, Michigan, USA. Founded in 1855, it was the pioneer land-grant institution and served as a model for future land-grant colleges in the United States under the 1862 Morrill Act.MSU pioneered the studies of packaging,...
, East Lansing, MI - Milwaukee Museum of Art, Milwaukee, WI
- Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.
- Museum of American Folk Art, New York City, NY
- New Bedford City Hall, New Bedford, MA
- New York State Historical AssociationNew York State Historical AssociationThe New York State Historical Association is a private, non-governmental educational organization founded in 1899 to encourage research, educate general audiences, and start a library and museum of manuscripts, artwork, and other objects associated with the history of New York State, USThe...
, Fenimore House Museum, Cooperstown, NY - Oakland International AirportOakland International AirportOakland International Airport , also known as Metropolitan Oakland International Airport, is a public airport located south of the central business district of Oakland, a city in Alameda County, California, United States...
Terminal Building, Oakland, CA - State Administration Building, Providence, RI
- Vito Marcantonio Library, Hackensack, NJ (has in its collection 50+ signed Fasanella art prints)
External links
- Virtual Gallery
- Working-Class Hero by Jerry Saltz, The Village Voice, June 11 2002