|  Professor
Emeritus Petter Bagnolo has had an amazing life thus far. He is truly a Renaissance man in
the fullest sense of the term: Architectural designer, painter, sculptor, writer,
novelist, intellectual, and inventor, and as a young man, athlete.
Professor Emeritus Bagnolo was offered an opportunity to skip three (3) grades in grammar school at age (8) eight after missing two years paralyzed with polio.
However, his parents in their Italo-American wisdom, allowed him only a one grade skip.
Otherwise he would have graduated primary school at age 10, high school at age 14,
and college at age 18. Certainly a wonderful start for a wunderkind, but not for a boy
or man socially.
Later, he was a recipient of an Art Institute
scholarship at age 11, but because of a serious bout
with polio a few years before, and a relapse of muscular
atrophication, his parents refused to allow him to attend
classes. Despite his polio, he became a baseball player
talented enough to gain try-outs and contract offers
from several major league ball clubs at age 16-17. At
that time, one had to be 21 years of age for a contract
to be valid and his parents refused the bonus offers,
preferring him to go to college instead.
He became a Ford Foundation Fellowship Recipient in
Anthropology in college, and was the first of only 12 out of 1200 accepted
into a special program as a result. He later won a full
tuition Talent-merit/gifted based scholarship for his
figure paintings in his senior year, the first such award
granted in 25 years at his university. The University credited him
with a triple bachelor's degree in Painting and Drawing, Architectural/Exhibition
Design and Advertising - the last multiple degree they ever granted, and a minor in Cultural
Anthropology (which actually qualifies as a Major). Uncertain of how to present his much faceted
degree, they titled it formally: Environmental Design.
Lothar Wittebourg, Director of the Field Museum Department
of Exhibition Design, mentored him through the exhibition/architectural
segment. His graduate architectural structural model,
plans, and thesis, with Witteborg's mentoring and input.
He was also responsible for a great many large scale stained
glass projects, sometimes in collaboration with others,
sometimes designing the color scale presentation
art, sometimes doing the full-size and working drawings for the windows, sometimes choosing the many
colored glass pieces for the entire window
and at other times doing all of those things, depending upon his availability.
Early in his career, he drew 110 larger than life-sized
realistic charcoal figure drawings complete with buildings, back/foreground and landscaping for a mural in less
than 10 days.
 Now as painter, his art, whether surreal, realistic,
slickly painted, or thick, rapid and vigorous brush strokes
in a painterly Impressionism, more favors the art of
the Italian and Spanish Impressionists, than the French,
and he is also strongly influenced by John Singer Sergeant,
Sir Francis (Frank) Brangwyn, Dean Cornwell and the American
illustrators of the Brandywine era and beyond, Vincenzo
Irolli of the Italian Macheolli, Joaquin Sorolla, the great Spanish Impressionist,
and wishes he could but even approach their great skill.
Professor Bagnolo's paintings are usually brightly colored
and he is fond of of the smoothly blended Blurry “Lost” edges and the sharply defined,
“Found” edges (or Hard edges) which have made his work so distinctive.
He paints he says, what he sees and what he sees is affected by what he feels. His art is at times
heroic in scale, fantastic in imagination and mystical in conception.
Professor Bagnolo strives to make the figures he designs
as real as is feasible within the strictures and covenants
of the project and the ambiance surrounding the piece
on which he is working. Because his main interest is figures,
he paints fewer landscapes, seascapes and still-life, however, he uses them as
backgrounds, because he says, such natural elements contain the visible spirit
of their Creator.
How does he work? He always begins with small-scale thumbnail sketches in ink, pencil, or watercolor.
Then when satisfied, depending on size, complexity, and media,
he poses, lights, and photographs his models (usually
his wife, himself and friends) and proceeds from the
sketches and photos to larger scale art. When doing work
created for commissions or for his private collections,
he makes mixed media preliminary paintings, which he
keeps for his private sales limited almost exclusively for new
collectors. When he paints, his studio is adorned with
the work of his favorite artists and he studies the
great masters daily, always hoping to find a new way
of solving a complex painting problem, with their help.
 Some of his figure paintings are
tastefully erotic and still others are more
representative of the giftedness of a highly intelligent,
well-educated man with the playful interests of a child.
Always his work strives for a certain kind of realistic
anatomical perfection, and when he paints, his brush strokes
are rapid and vigorous. In some of his compositions
he takes creative liberty to recreate the human figure
beyond it’s corporeal limitations by hyperbolizing
anatomical structural details to promote an aesthetic
otherwise impossible to attain, (an aesthetic Michelangelo
used to great advantage.) When once asked why someone
so obviously able to create minute details, on occasion, appears to
shun them, he gave the following reply:
"Painting is fun, but what leads up to the finished
product is very disciplined, detailed work. Having done
the hard work first, I like to have fun with the final
piece. I don’t ignore background or foreground details
if they are a requirement for the image to work, but sometimes
I think background details are a distraction and thus I take
a strict impressionist view of them. I am usually so anxious
to get to the figure that I paint the surrounding
material first and in that way, like a kid looking forward to a dessert,
I save the best until last. I rarely paint outdoor modern
city scenes because, while I find that what men create in the
urban environment interesting, the scenes often carry with them a certain depressing
sterility which is not as interesting nor as colorfully refreshing to me as
the natural environment.”
"Mostly my work is lacking in symbolism. I sometimes find symbolism and
abstraction in finished pieces a bit contrived and pompous
and cannot in good conscience, do such stuff, unless it has
a direct bearing on the image without which, it would fail.
I say that, although always at a certain point, there is a degree
of abstraction in preliminary sketches, I love the beauty,
symmetry, and even the asymmetry of natural forms. There
are occasions when I paint a beautiful woman, or a majestic
athletic figure or a tree or a mountain, I think of
Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling and Last Judgment, I was so in awe
I nearly moved to Italy just to see it regularly.
When you contemplate that God gave him that skill, you then stand in awe of the
greatness of the Mind of God.
So it is fair to say that we take what we
see and unconsciously it is infused with what we feel. To me, attempting
to give an impression of what I believe to be God’s
intention when He created each thing I admire, is the
real satisfaction and fun of painting. I think, ‘If
God were a man, how would He do this?’ Then I realize
He, the One who builds universes would not need to use
tools and supplies, He truly creates from scratch. He passed
His Creativity on to us as a gift, although much reduced and in moderation.
Therefore, my work, however unworthy, is a
gift back to God, although I do charge humans for my
efforts.”
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