Lucio Fontana
Lucio Fontana
Born	(1899-02-19)February 19, 1899 Rosario Santa Fe, Argentina
Died	September 7, 1968(1968-09-07) (aged 69) Varese, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Field	Painting, Sculpture
Training	Brera Academy, Milan
Influenced by	spatialism (spaziale)

Lucio Fontana (19 February 1899 – 7 September 1968) was an Italian painter, sculptor and theorist of Argentine birth.^[1] He was mostly known as the founder of Spatialism and his ties to Arte Povera.

Early life[link]

Born in Rosario, province of Santa Fe, Argentina of Italian parents, he is the son of Luigi Fontana.^[2][3] Fontana spent the first years of his life in Italy and came back to Argentina in 1905, where he stayed until 1922, working as a sculptor along with his father, and then on his own. Already in 1926, he participated in the first exhibition of Nexus, a group of young Argentinean artists working in Rosario de Santa Fé.^[4]

Work[link]

In 1927 Fontana returned to Italy and studied under the sculptor Adolfo Wildt,^[5] at Accademia di Brera from 1928 to 1930. It was there where he presented his first exhibition in 1930, organized by the Milano art gallery Il Milione. During the following decade he journeyed Italy and France, working with abstract and expressionist painters. In 1935 he joined the association Abstraction-Création in Paris and from 1936 to 1949 made expressionnist sculptures in ceramic and bronze. In 1939, he joined the Corrente, a Milan group of expressionist artists.^[6]

In 1940 he returned to Argentina. In Buenos Aires (1946) he founded the Altamira academy together with some of his students, and made public the White Manifesto, where it is stated that "Matter, colour and sound in motion are the phenomena whose simultaneous development makes up the new art". In the text, which Fontana did not sign but to which he actively contributed, he began to formulate the theories that he was to expand as Spazialismo, or Spatialism, in five manifestos from 1947 to 1952.^[7] Upon his return from Argentina in 1947, he supported, along with writers and philosophers, the first manifesto of spatialism (Spazialismo)**. Fontana had found his studio and works completely destroyed in the Allied bombings of Milan,^[8] but soon also resumed his ceramics works in Albisola.

Following his return to Italy in 1948 Fontana exhibited his first Ambiente spaziale a luce nera (Spatial Environment) (1949) at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan, a temporary installation consisting of a giant amoeba-like shape suspended in the void in a darkened room and lit by neon light. From 1949 on he started the so-called Spatial Concept or slash series, consisting in holes or slashes on the surface of monochrome paintings, drawing a sign of what he named "an art for the Space Age". He devised the generic title Concetto spaziale (‘spatial concept’) for these works and used it for almost all his later paintings. These can be divided into broad categories: the Buchi (‘holes’), beginning in 1949, and the Tagli (‘slashes’), which he instituted in the mid-1950s.^[9]

Fontana often lined the reverse of his canvases with black gauze so that the darkness would shimmer behind the open cuts and create a mysterious sense of illusion and depth.^[10] He then created an elaborate neon ceiling called "Luce spaziale" in 1951 for the Triennale in Milan.^[11][12] In his important series of Concetto spaziale, La Fine di Dio (1963-64), Fontana uses the egg shape. With his Pietre (stones) series, begun in 1952, Fontana fused the sculptural with painting by encrusting the surfaces of his canvases with heavy impasto and colored glass. In his Buchi (holes) cycle, begun in 1949-50, he punctured the surface of his canvases, breaking the membrane of two-dimensionality in order to highlight the space behind the picture.^[13] From 1958 he purified his paintings by creating matte, monochrome surfaces, thus focusing the viewer’s attention on the slices that rend the skin of the canvas.^[14] In 1959 Fontana exhibited cut-off paintings with multiple combinable elements (he named the sets quanta), and began Nature, a series of sculptures made by cutting a gash across a sphere of terracotta clay, which he subsequently cast in bronze.^[15]

Fontana engaged in many collaborative projects with the most important architects of the day, in particular with Luciano Baldessari, who shared and supported his research for Spatial Light – Structure in Neon (1951) at the 9th Triennale and, among other things, commissioned him to design the ceiling of the cinema in the Sidercomit Pavilion at the 21st Milan Fair in 1953.^[16]

Around 1960, Fontana began to reinvent the cuts and punctures that had characterized his highly personal style up to that point, covering canvases with layers of thick oil paint applied by hand and brush and using a scalpel or Stanley knife to create great fissures in their surface. In 1961, following an invitation to participate along with artists Jean Dubuffet, Mark Rothko, Sam Francis, and others in an exhibition of contemporary painting entitled "Art and Contemplation", held at Palazzo Grassi in Venice, he created a series of 22 works dedicated to the lagoon city. He manipulated the paint with his fingers and various instruments to make furrows, sometimes including scattered fragments of Murano glass.^[17] Fontana was subsequently invited by Michel Tapié to exhibit the works at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. As a consequence of his first visit to New York in 1961, he created a series of metal works, done between 1961 and 1965.^[18] The works consisted of large sheets of shiny and scratched copper, pierced and gouged, cut through by dramatic vertical gestures that recall the force of New York construction and the metal and glass of the buildings.^[19]

Among Fontana’s last works are a series of Teatrini (‘little theatres’), in which he returned to an essentially flat idiom by using backcloths enclosed within wings resembling a frame; the reference to theatre emphasizes the act of looking, while in the foreground a series of irregular spheres or oscillating, wavy silhouettes creates a lively shadow play.^[20] Another work from that time, Trinità (Trinity) (1966), consists of three large white canvases punctuated by lines of holes, embraced in a theatrical setting made from ultramarine plastic sheets vaguely resembling wings.^[21]

In the last years of his career, Fontana became increasingly interested in the staging of his work in the many exhibitions that honored him worldwide, as well as in the idea of purity achieved in his last white canvases. These concerns were prominent at the 1966 Venice Biennale, for which he designed the environment for his work.^[22] At Documenta IV in Kassel in 1968, he positioned a large, revelatory slash as the centre of a totally white room (Ambiente spaziale bianco).^[23]

Shortly before his death he was present at the "Destruction Art, Destroy to Create" demonstration at the Finch College Museum of New York. Then he left his home in Milano and went to Comabbio (in the province of Varese, Italy), his family's mother town, where he died in 1968.

Fontana created a prolific amount of graphic work with abstract motifs as well as figures, little-known in the art world, at the same time as he was producing his abstract perforated works.^[24] He was also the sculptor of the bust of Ovidio Lagos, founder of the La Capital newspaper, in Carrara marble.

Exhibitions[link]

Fontana had his first solo exhibitions at Galleria del Milione, Milan, in 1931. In 1961, Michel Tapié organized his first show in the U.S., an exhibition of the Venice series, at the Martha Jackson Gallery, New York. His first solo exhibition at an American museum was held at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in 1966.^[25] He participated in the Bienal de São Paulo and in numerous exhibitions around the world. Among others, major retrospectives have been organized by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (2006), Hayward Gallery, London (1999), Fondazione Lucio Fontana (1999), and the Centre Georges Pompidou (1987). Since 1930 Fontana's work had been exhibited regularly at the Venice Biennale, and he represented Argentina various times; he was awarded the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale of 1966.

Collections[link]

Today Fontana's works can be found in the permanent collections of more than one hundred museums around the world. In particular, examples from the Pietre series are housed in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, and the van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.^[26] Fontana's jewelry is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.^[27]

Art market[link]

A rare, large crimson work with a single slash, which Fontana dedicated to his wife and which has always been known as the Teresita, fetched a record £6.7m ($11.6m) at Christie’s London in 2008.^[28] Even more popular are the Fontana's oval canvases. Sotheby’s sold a work titled Concetto spaziale, la fine di dio (1963) for £10.32m in 2008.^[29] Part of Fontana's Venice circle, Festival on the Grand Canal was sold at Christie’s in New York for $7m in 2008.

Gallery[link]

• Photograph of Lucio Fontana by Ugo Mulas.jpg

  Photograph of Lucio Fontana by Ugo Mulas

• 'Concept Spatiale', 1959 painting by --Lucio Fontana--, 100 x 125 cm.jpg

  'Concept Spatiale', 1959 painting by Lucio Fontana, 100 x 125 cm.

• 'Spatial Concept (Concetto spaziale) No. 18 and Nature (Natura) No. 28, bronze sculptures by Lucio Fontana, 1959-60, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.JPG

  Spatial Concept (Concetto spaziale) No. 18 and Nature (Natura) No. 28, bronze sculptures by Lucio Fontana, 1959-60, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

• 'Concetto Spaziale', waterpaint and oil on canvas by Lucio Fontana, 1964, 55 x 46 cm.jpg

  'Concetto Spaziale', waterpaint and oil on canvas by Lucio Fontana, 1964, 55 x 46 cm.

See also[link]

• Michel Tapié

Source[link]

• This article draws from the corresponding article in the Spanish Wikipedia.
  • http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=282

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lucio Fontana

• Fondazione Lucio Fontana

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (January 2011)

Joby Talbot (born 25 August 1971) is a British composer.

Born in Wimbledon, London, Talbot studied composition at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama under Brian Elias and Simon Bainbridge.

In 1993 Talbot first met Neil Hannon and began arranging and performing with his group The Divine Comedy. One of their tracks, "In Pursuit of Happiness", was used as the theme music for BBC TV's Tomorrow's World.

Other works for television written by Talbot include the theme music for Young Musician of the Year, and the music for the BBC 2 comedy series The League of Gentlemen, which was awarded the Golden Rose at the Montreux International TV Festival.

During 2004, Talbot was Classic FM's first resident composer. Talbot wrote a new piece of music, scored for up to five instruments, each month for the year of his residence. These pieces have also been premiered and playlisted on Classic FM. The twelve compositions form part of a larger piece, released on a CD entitled Once Around the Sun on 23 May 2005.

Talbot wrote the original music for the film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as well as music for the film The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse. Other screen credits include the television comedy series The League of Gentlemen, and two silent films for the British Film Institute: Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger and Yevgeni Bauer's The Dying Swan. Talbot also wrote the original music for Garth Jennings' film Son of Rambow.

The U.S. premiere of Talbot's Path of Miracles took place on 12-13 November 2007 at the World Financial Center Winter Garden, as part of WNYC's New Sounds Live concert series. ^[1]

In 2007, Talbot was part of the creative team that produced the ballet Chroma for The Royal Ballet. The piece was choreographed by Wayne McGregor and performed to Talbot's orchestral arrangements of music by the White Stripes. Talbot also wrote additional music for the ballet, as well as writing new arrangements for the Royal Opera House orchestra. The ballet would later win the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production.

In 2010, Talbot wrote the score for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a ballet choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon with a scenario by Nicholas Wright which was commissioned by the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, and the National Ballet of Canada. Lasting 1 hour 40 minutes, it is the first full-length score for the Royal Ballet in 20 years.^[2] It was shown on BBC Television 23 April 2011.

Tide Harmonic, a work in 5 movements for chamber orchestra on the subject of water, was released on 27 June 2011 by Signum Classics^[3].

Key works[link]

• The Lodger (1999: music to silent film)
• Similarities Between Diverse Things (2002; chamber ensemble)
• String Quartet No 2 (2002)
• Sneaker Wave (2004; orchestra)
• Cumulonimbus (2004; cello, piano)
• Path of Miracles (2005; choir)
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (2010; orchestra with four female voices)

Discography[link]

• The Dying Swan, Music For 1 To 7 Players (2002) — Black Box BBM1078
• The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse (original sound track) (2005) — Silva Screen SILCD1189
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (original sound track) (2005)
• Once Around the Sun (2005) — various performers — Sony BMG 82876 695252
• Path of Miracles (2006) — commission from vocal group Tenebrae
• Penelope (original sound track) (2008)
• "Franklyn" (original sound track) (2009) — Silva Screen SILCD1293
• Psychoville Halloween Special (with Jeremy Holland-Smith) (original sound track) (2010)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official site
• Joby Talbot at ChesterNovello
• Joby Talbot at the Internet Movie Database
• Joby Talbot interview at musicOMH.com
• The Divine Comedy

Sterling Ruby (born 1972) is a contemporary American artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Ruby was born in Bitburg, Germany, to a Dutch mother and an American father, and was raised in Baltimore, Maryland and near Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania.^[1]

Education[link]

Sterling Ruby went to agriculture school and worked in construction before studying art at the Pennsylvania School of Art and Design in Lancaster, PA.^[2] In 2001, he received his BA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2003, he relocated to Los Angeles and enrolled in the MFA program at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA.^[3] Since 2010, Sterling Ruby is lecturing as a professor of art at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. ^[4]

Work[link]

Sterling Ruby is a multi-disciplinary artist who has become known for his richly glazed biomorphic ceramics, large-scale spray-painted canvases, poured urethane sculptures, various forms of collage, and video work. In a 2008 review, New York Times art critic Roberta Smith called Ruby "one of the most interesting artists to emerge in this century. That's only eight years, of course," she added, "but the claim may stick." ^[5]

He takes his subject matter from a wide range of sources, including marginalized societies, maximum security prisons, modernist architecture, artifacts and antiquities, graffiti, the mechanisms of warfare, and urban gangs. His work has often been cited as invoking minimalism as a means to expose underlying systems and social power structures.^[6]

Exhibitions[link]

Sterling Ruby’s most recent solo exhibitions include VAMPIRE The Pace Gallery, Beijing (2011), Sterling Ruby & Lucio Fontana, Andrea Rosen, New York (2011), Sterling Ruby, I AM NOT FREE BECAUSE I CAN BE EXPLODED ANYTIME, Sprüth Magers, Berlin (2011), Sterling Ruby Paintings, Xavier Hufkens, Brussels (2011), 2TRAPS, PaceWildenstein, New York (2010), Sterling Ruby/Robert Mapplethorpe, Xavier Hufkens, Brussels (2009), SUPERMAX 2008 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CHRON at the Drawing Center, New York (2008), and Grid Ripper, Galleria d’arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo, Italy (2008). Ruby’s work was also included in the recent group exhibitions New Works in Ceramics, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan (2011), George Herms: Xenophilia (Love of the Unknown), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2011), Silence and Time, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX (2011), At Capacity: Large Scale Works from the Permanent Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL (2011), Dystopia, CAPC Musee D’Art Contemporain De Bourdeaux, Bourdeaux, France (2011), Lustwarande 2011-Raw, Park De Oude Warande, Museum De Pont, Tilburg, Netherlands (2011), Permanent Mimesis: An Exhibition on Realism and Simulation, Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Torino, Italy (2010), New Photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2009), Five, Baibakov Art Projects, Red October Chocolate Factory, Moscow (2009), Dirt on Delight, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (2008), and Stray Alchemists, Ullens Center of Contemporary Art, Beijing (2008). His work can be found in numerous public collections worldwide, including the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo, Norway; Contemporary and Modern Art Museum of Trento and Rovereto, Italy; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Honart Museum, Tehran, Iran; Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; LACMA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Nasher Museum, Dallas, TX; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; The Art Gallery of Ontario, Ontario, Canada; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Tate Modern, London, England; and the Yokohama Museum, Japan.^[3]

Publications[link]

Eslöv Wide Shut: 100 year Anniversary of Eslöv. (exhibition catalog) Eslöv, Sweden and Mallorca Landings, Palma de Mallorca, Spain 2011.

MapplethorpeX7. Richard Flood, teNues Publishing Group, Kempen, Germany, 2011.

New Dystopia. Mark Von Shlegell, Sternberg Press, Berlin in collaboration with CAPC Musee d’art Contemporain de Bourdeaux, France, 2011.

Sterling Ruby Desktop Vol.1. The Pace Gallery, Beijing, China, 2011.

Vitamin P2: New Perspectives in Painting. Schwabsky, Barry. Text by Jan Tumlir. London, Phaidon Press, 2011.

Permanent Mimesis: An Exhibition about Simulation and Realism. GAM-Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo, Italy. 2010

Permanent Trouble: Kunst aus der Sammlung Kopp Munchen. Germany: Snoeck Verlagsgesellschaft, 2010.

Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art since the 1960s. Text by David S. Rubin. Texas: San Antonio Museum of Art, 2010.

Rive Droite/ Rive Gauche. Zurich:JRP/Ringier, Paris: Marc Jancou Contemporary, 2010.

Sterling Ruby: Ashtrays. Galerie Pierre Marie Giraud, Brussels, Belgium, 2010.

Sterling Ruby: Ceramics 2007-2010. Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, 2010.

Beg,Borrow,and Steal. Miami: Rubell Family Collection, 2009

New York Minute. Kathy Grayson. Published by O.H.W.O.W, 2009.

Painting Abstraction: New Elements in Abstract Painting. Bob Nickas, Phaidon Press Inc., 2009.

Sterling Ruby. Robert Hobbs, Jorg Heiser, Alessandro Rabottini and Sterling Ruby, JRP Ringier, 2009.

Sterling Ruby Robert Mappelthorpe. Brussels, Belgium: Xavier Hufkens, 2009.

The Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture. Saatchi Gallery. Rizzoli International Publications, 2009.

Vitamin 3-D: New Perspectives in Sculpture and Installation. Phaidon Press Inc., 2009.

If You Destroy the Image, You'll Destroy the Thing in Itself. Bergen: Norway: Bergen Kunsthall, 2008.

Stray Alchemists. Beijing, China: Ullens Center for the Arts, 2008.

Sterling Ruby Chron. New York:The Drawing Center, 2008.

Sterling Ruby Supermax 2008. Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 2008.

Red Eye: L.A. Artists from the Rubell Family Collection. Miami: Rubell Family Collection, 2007.

2006 California Biennial: Orange County Museum of Art. Michael Ned Holte, Orange County, California, 2006.

The Pantagruel Syndrome. Torino, Italy: T1 Torino Triennale Tremusei, 2005.

Further reading[link]

21 Questions for Sterling Ruby. Artinfo.com. October 11, 2011. [1]

The Principles of Eternity. Rachel Corbett, Artnet.com [2]

Art in Review: Sterling Ruby and Lucio Fontana. Ken Johnson, The New York Times, September 22, 2011. [3]

Carol Bove/Sterling Ruby/Dana Schutz. Daniel Kunitz, Modern Painters, August 5, 2010. [4]

The Promised Land? Will Portugal Arte 10 Become a Fixture on the Art World Calendar? Marina Cashdan, Huffingtonpost.com, August 3, 2010. [5]

Carol Bove, Sterling Ruby, Dana Schutz.Merrily Kerr, Time Out New York, Issue 775, 2010.[6]

The Masculine Mystique: Houseago, Ruby & Kyack, Degan Pener, Paul Young, Andrew Berardini, Angeleno Magazine, April 7, 2010 [7]

Art and Incarceration: Sterling Ruby's Stark Cages, Matt Kelley, Criminal Justice, March 25, 2010 [8]

Sterling Ruby: Sincerely Hostile, João Ribas, Flash Art int. Ed., XLIII.271, Mar.- Apr. 2010: 80-84. [9]

Best in Show/Sterling Ruby's Cage Heat, Linda Yablonsky, T Magazine, The New York Times Style Magazine, February 11, 2010 [10]

New York Times Round Up: Make Room for Video, Performances and Paint. Roberta Smith, The New York Times, December 31, 2009 [11]

Unearthed Classics and Reinvented Forms: The Best Art of 2009. Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine, December 20, 2009 [12]

Sterling Ruby in New York. Andrew Russeth, Artinfo.com, November 6, 2009 [13]

Sterling Ruby, Kevin West, W Magazine, November 2009 [14]

New Photography 2009, Museum of Modern Art, New York. MoMA Multimedia Video Interview [15]

Weekend Update, Walter Robinson, artnet Magazine, June 2009 [16]

Who is Sterling Ruby? Julian Myers, Frieze Magazine, April 2009 [17]

Brief Reflection on Sterling Ruby. Ed Schad. I call it ORANGES blog, July 22, 2008 [18]

Art in Review, Sterling Ruby, Chron, Kiln Works, Roberta Smith, The New York Times, March 21, 2008 [19]

External links[link]

• Homecoming - a conversation with Sterling Ruby - April 27, 2011
• Sterling Ruby at Xavier Hufkens, Brussels
• Sterling Ruby at Sprüth Magers Berlin London

References[link]

1. ^ "Sterling Ruby Faculty Profile at the European Graduate School. Biography, bibliography, quotes and links.". Saas-Fee,Switzerland: European Graduate School. http://www.egs.edu/faculty/sterling-ruby/biography/. Retrieved 2011-01-30. 
2. ^ Peter Yeoh (2010). "Artistic Transgressor". Glass Magazine (4): 179. ISSN 2041-6318. 
3. ^ ^{a b} Foxy Production, Artist Bio, Sterling Ruby http://www.foxyproduction.com/artist/view/6
4. ^ Sterling Ruby Faculty Profile at the European Graduate School. Biography, bibliography, quotes and links.". Saas-Fee,Switzerland: European Graduate School. Retrieved 2011-01-30.
5. ^ Smith, Roberta "Art in Review, Sterling Ruby" New York Times, March 21, 2008 page E29
6. ^ Sterling Ruby. Robert Hobbs, Jorg Heiser, Alessandro Rabottini and Sterling Ruby. Bergamo: Gallery d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea of Bergamo, 2009.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2009)

Andrea Rosen
Born	(1974-09-29) 29 September 1974 (age 37) New York, New York

Andrea Rosen (born September 29, 1974) is an American comedian and actress most notable for her work with comedy troupes Stella and Variety Shac, and for her appearances in numerous television commercials.

Biography[link]

Rosen was born in New York, New York. She grew up in Roosevelt Island, New York City. Her father, a former Creative Director at an advertising agency in Connecticut, has now semi-retired as the operator of a bone fishing lodge in The Bahamas.^{[citation needed]}

Rosen herself has taken up fishing as a hobby; she claims to hold the women's world fishing record for catching a 42-pound (19 kg) Permit fish.^[1]

Rosen shared an apartment for five years with Stella member Michael Showalter.^[2]

Career[link]

A regular on the Brooklyn comedy circuit, Ms. Rosen has written and performed two one-woman shows, "Fast and Loose" and "Room for Rent".^{[citation needed]}

Rosen was discovered in December 2000, when Terry's Chocolate named her "America's Whackiest Amateur Comedian".^[3]

Rosen co-wrote and performed "It's a Detective Agency and Everyone's English", a play at the NYC Fringe Festival. In late 2007, Rosen revealed that Variety Shac is working on a television pilot for the Adult Swim cable network.^{[citation needed]}

Films[link]

• Wedding Daze (2007)
• The Ten (2007)
• The Baxter (2005) (uncredited)

TV shows[link]

• Michael and Michael Have Issues (2009)
• Flight of the Conchords (2009)
• Whitest Kids U'Know (2007)
• VH1's 40 Most Softsational Soft-Rock Songs (2007)
• VH1's All Access (2006— )^[4]
• Rescue Me (2006)
• Denis Leary's Merry F#%$in' Christmas (2005)
• Stella (2005)
• VH1's ...ever! franchise (2004–2005)
• The Wrong Coast (2004)
• Shaman King (2003)

Commercials[link]

• Hershey's (2004)
• Verizon (2005)
• Nabisco (2006)
• Staples, Inc. (2006)^[5]
• Yoplait (2007)^[6]
• New York Lottery (2008)^[7]
• Bing (2009)
• Cinnamon Toast Crunch (2010)

Live performances[link]

Rosen performs monthly at Upright Citizens Brigade Theater with her group Variety Shac.^[8] She has also made the following solo performances:

• "Fast and Loose"
• "Room for Rent"
• "It's a Detective Agency and Everyone's English" (co-writer/producer)
• Invite Them Up (stand-up performer)
• Pie-Hole Comedy Show (regular host, 2000— )^[9]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Andrea Rosen at the Internet Movie Database
• Galapagos Art Space
• Biography at Variety Shac
• Eliot Glazer (2007-10-11). "Inside With: Andrea Rosen". The Apiary. http://www.theapiary.org/archives/2007/10/inside_with_and_1.html. 

Erminio Blotta and his family, c.1925.

Erminio Blotta (November 8, 1892 – January 23, 1976) was an Argentine self-taught sculptor of Italian origin.

Biography[link]

He was born in Morano Calabro (province of Cosenza, Calabria). His birth certificate records his name as Erminio Antonio Blotta Mainieri, but his Argentine identity papers have Carmen Erminio Blotta instead.

A bust of Giuseppe Garibaldi by E. Blotta, at the Hospital Italiano of Rosario.

Blotta's family came to his adoptive country when he was only a child, at the beginning of 1894, during a major wave of Italian immigration to Argentina. They settled in Rosario, Santa Fe Province, about 280 km northwest of Buenos Aires. Two of his father's brothers were already living in Argentina, in the town which would then be called Lucio V. López, 40 km north-west of Rosario. Blotta was the eldest of nine siblings.

He was an apprentice worker in the Ferrocarril Central Argentino railway company, where he developed his basic sculpting skills by modelling figurines with clay. He then worked in a medal workshop with Marcos Vanzo, and modelled plaques and funeral portraits. In 1909 he studied with sculptor José Nardi.

At only 17 he travelled to Montevideo, Uruguay, where he stayed for one year (1909–1910) and then another year in Buenos Aires (1911–1912). He returned to Rosario, and with the assistance of his friends and the financial support of an amateur art fan he opened an exhibition gallery and presented his first bass-reliefs in bronze. He lived for four years in conventillos (cheap pensions), until in 1915 he managed to get a piece of land and set up a workshop, where several of his friends lived, at the expense of surgeon Artemio Zeno. He came in contact with many other poor intellectuals and artists (poets, painters, sculptors) and with the anarchist movement.

Blindness[link]

In November 1917, while he was finishing his monument to Juan Bautista Alberdi, a chip of marble (which was being worked by his assistant) broke Blotta's glasses, and glass splinters wounded both his eyes. He spent several months completely deprived of sight, until he was operated by surgeon Dr. Pedro Lagleyze. He only recovered the sight of his left eye. Blotta would later thank the physician with a sculpture.

Dr. Lagleyze sent him to recover at a friend's house in Villeta, 30 km south of Asunción, Paraguay. Blotta did not find the person he was looking for, but instead met the father of Paraguayan artist Modesto Delgado Rodas, who took him in as a guest. In Villeta, Blotta also met Carmen de Jesús Prieto Ruiz, a young schoolteacher and a few months later, on September 4, 1918, he married her.

During his stay, he collected aboriginal Tupi-Guarani art, and created some works that can be found still in several cities of Paraguay. Years later he was declared Honorary Citizen of Paraguay. In 1970, six years before his death, Blotta confessed in a newspaper that his most fervent wish would be to die a Paraguayan.

Family[link]

Blotta moved back to Rosario in mid-1920, after learning that his study had been robbed. His first son, Herminio, was born at that time. He moved several times until finally settling in a house on 3160 Marcos Paz St. (in Barrio Echesortu). He had five other children, the last of whom (a daughter) died as a baby. His residence gradually became the home of his Paraguayan in-laws.

Artistic work[link]

A bust of Dante Alighieri by E. Blotta, on Oroño Boulevard, Rosario.

Blotta was the literary commentator of the Buenos Aires newspaper La Nación, for which he wrote regularly, between the 1910s and the 1930s. His contributions were signed as "Herminio Blotta".

In his youth Blotta worked on marble and stone, besides clay, but in the mid-1920s he started producing less marble busts and tends to produce more works in clay, then cast in bronze. There are records (especially from La Capital newspaper) of more than 200 works of this type.

Blotta also worked as a Message Therapist in the Ports Direction of Rosario, and collaborated as a plaster artisan in the scale model of the thalweg of the Paraná River. Additionally, he earned a living with funeral art, producing (for example) several hundreds of bronze objects for headstones, often with his colleague Pedro Cresta (1912–1970).

In his old age the Municipality of Rosario granted him a special pension for his artistic labors. Erminio Blotta died surrounded by his family in Rosario, in 1976, at the age of 83.

Legacy[link]

Works by Erminio Blotta can be found in the Argentine provinces of Santa Fe, Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Córdoba, Tucumán, Entre Ríos (specifically in Concepción del Uruguay), and Chaco (in the capital city, Resistencia), as well as in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and in the Mefalsim kibbutz in Israel.

In 1978 a minor street in Rosario was renamed Escultor Blotta (Sculptor Blotta). It is a one-block passage formerly known as Pasaje Mercado, located 250 m from Blotta's monument to J. B. Alberdi.

References[link]

• Erminio Blotta (in the Spanish Wikipedia)

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