Abarth Fiat - Limited Edition of 20 Print

John Maggiotto lives and works in Hastings on Hudson, New York. He is one of seven children born to Louis and Catherine in Buffalo, New York. After a Jesuit secondary education he went on to the University at Buffalo studying art history and photography under Jack Quinlan, Don Blumberg, and Tyrone Giorgio. Upon graduation he immediately joined the collective of artists at 30 Essex Street, which formed the artist’s space Hallwalls. Under the CETA program he taught under privileged children photography and visual literacy at the CEPA Photography Gallery. He was director of Hallwalls in 1978-9. Maggiotto chose the recently introduced, Polaroid SX-70 camera, as his sole instrument of production. The painterly palette of this film matched his fascination and exploration of the color television screen. He captured fleeting gestures and fragments of the news, movies, and television programs of the times. Highly influenced by Robert Longo, Jack Goldstein and the Pictures artists, decontextualizing as he went, John formed new narratives in single and multiple image grids. Here his work was recognized and included in the 1979 Albright-Knox Art Gallery exhibition In Western New York, curated by Linda Cathcart and Charlotta Kotik. In 1980 he moved to Washington, DC to work in the Visual Arts division at the National Endowment for the Arts under Jim Melchert and Nancy Drew. There he met and was influenced by artists John Baldessari, Nathan Lyons, Maren Hassinger, Martin Puryear, and William Wegman. His view from the nation’s Capitol made Los Angeles his next destination. His television grids were exhibited at both LACE and LAICA in solo shows and his work was chosen for the cover of LACE’s TV Generations catalog in 1986. 1985 brought Maggiotto back to the east coast. Finding the Polaroid format too constricting he began to exhibit large format color prints. Early shows at White Columns and the Alternative Museum featured linear grids over 90 inches. Though he would return to this format later, Maggiotto adopted non-traditional materials to display his images, first pouring plaster plates, then wall fragments, and eventually multi-colored marble tiles. Holly Block at Art in General introduced this work, and Bill Arning at White Columns also supported it. This led to a six-year affiliation with Laurence Miller Gallery. John was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 1988 and an Art Matters merit award in 1989.