Sisti Show: Perfect For Burchfield Penney's Regional Mission

I've already mentioned here some of the many things to like about the new Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, which is just across the street from the Albright-Knox and which opened last November. One of them is a current exhibition called "Anthony J. Sisti: A Forgotten Regionalist, Selections From the Collection."

The show is in keeping with the museum's mission to be "The Museum for Western New York Arts" for contemporary art and for modern works. Sisti was a Greenwich Village-born boxer turned artist who spent most of his life in Buffalo, where he had a well-known gallery.  

Classically trained in Florence and at the Albright Art School in Buffalo, his works, according to newspaper articles, were shown at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Museum of Modern Art, among others, during his lifetime. 

But he seems to be one of those artists who suffered by being good at too many kinds of art: He painted political portraits of people like President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Gov. Al Smith, was a muralist for the Works Progress Administration, painted boxers in the ring, did landscapes. He taught art in Buffalo and New York. He was talented, but not very original. You can see the influence of artists like Diego Rivera, Thomas Hart Benton and others in his work. (At right is Picnic At Chesnut Ridge, 1943.)

Apparently, Sisti was a bit of a swashbuckler, too.