Painter's 90-Year Career Overwhelms St. Louis Gallery Space

The gallery at 4735 McPherson in the Central West End is bucking its own tradition. For 23 years, Philip Slein Gallery has typically reserved its front room for individual exhibitions. For the first time, the entire space is dedicated to a single artist.

The exhibition, titled Edward E. Boccia: An American Modernist, opens on October 23 with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. and runs through December 19. It features more than 30 paintings by a man who lived in St. Louis for six decades and worked until his death in 2012.

Gallery owner Philip Slein noted that this is the largest display he has mounted at the venue. "The only thing that could be bigger than this would be at an institution," Slein said. The scale of the show reflects the volume of Boccia's output, which included thousands of works ranging from small seaside scenes to monumental multi-panel pieces.

Boccia was born in New Jersey in 1921 to Italian parents. He served in the World War II Ghost Army and studied at the Pratt Institute, the Art Students League, and Columbia University. He introduced Bauhaus sensibilities to students at the Columbus Art School in Ohio before joining the faculty at Washington University in 1951.

He remained at Washington University for more than 30 years, retiring in 1986 as a professor emeritus. Rosa Berland, an art historian and curator based in New York, described his teaching style as rigorous but encouraging for students to find "their own kind of fire."

The current installation fills the front room with Boccia's largest pieces. These include the nine-panel autobiographical polyptych "Eugene's Journey" and the 2004 triptych "David's Death," one of several works meditating on the death of his son. A hallway displays mythic scenes of ocean journeys featuring figures that appear to emit inner light.

In the final room, a salon wall traces the artist's evolution. It juxtaposes a 1950s portrait with a work painted in 2012, shortly before Boccia died at age 91. Influences from Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, and St. Louis figure Max Beckmann are visible throughout the collection.

A companion book, Edward E. Boccia: Painter of Nightmares and Dreams, will be published by Hirmer during the exhibition. Berland wrote the text after 14 years of research. It is the first major monograph on the artist and includes dozens of images, including fold-out plates that show the scale of his multi-panel paintings.

Berland credited Morton D. May, whose collection was partially gifted to the Saint Louis Art Museum, as Boccia's greatest patron. She characterized the artist as a polymath who studied philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis, and history. A pamphlet for the show includes Boccia's own instruction: "Don't worry about what my art means. Just experience it."

Berland argued that such work requires a level of engagement that modern life often lacks. "We don't slow down anymore," she said, comparing the viewing experience to reading a poem or a philosophical text.