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Lawrence Calcagno

Lawrence Calcagno (1913-1993) was a Bay Area Abstract Expressionist who studied under , Clifford Still, and other prominent members of the movement. Calcagno was born on March 23, 1913 in , . When he was 10 years old his family moved to their ranch in California's Santa Lucia Mountains, a range that divides a foggy coastal region from a vast expanse of desert. Much later, the ethereal effects of the Pacific mist and the rippling heat of the Salinas Valley would find their way into Calcagno's abstract paintings.

In his early 20s, Calcagno left the homestead for a world tour with the merchant marines, and by 1941 he had enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps for World War II. During his time in the service he entered artwork into Army art competitions, winning first prize in the Southwest Regional Competition.

The G.I. Bill enabled Calcagno to study at the California School of Fine Arts, where Rothko, Still, Diebenkorn and Edward Corbett were his teachers. He was at the CSFA from 1947-50, and continued his studies at art academies and from 1950-6.

A series of prestigious teaching positions followed. Calcagno held professorships at the , the University of , University and Carnegie Mellon University. Meanwhile his art career soared, with exhibitions at the , the Guggenheim and numerous biennials around the world.

For Calcagno, painting was an obsessive and therapeutic pursuit. “Painting was the one avenue through which I could find psychical tolerance and be released," he wrote. "My life has always been motivated not by intellectual or rational considerations but more by a subjective compulsion, by what I love.”

Calcagno died in 1993.

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