Pulcinella on Stilts No. 1, Carlo Marchiori

Carlo Marchiori was born in Bassano del Grappa near Venice, and studied classic art and academic design in Padua and Venice. At the age of eighteen, he left Italy to live in Canada where he worked as illustrator and film animator for C.B.C. Television and the National Film Board of Canada. In 1967 he was nominated for an Academy Award for an animated short film, but eventually abandoned filmmaking and advertising for painting and sculpture.

Since moving to California in 1978, Marchiori has become a world-renowned muralist specializing in period art interpretations. He produces murals in Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassic styles using fresco-like techniques.

In San Francisco, his murals adorn the lobby of the Hotel St. Francis, the couture department of Nordstrom, the walls and ceiling of Emporio Rulli, and have drawn critical praise at 1001 Nob Hill and Square One restaurants. They are also features of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, Raffles in Singapore and Tokyo’s Disney Resort.

A true “Renaissance man”, Marchiori also produces original ceramic plates, ceramic tile panels, paintings, sculptures, furniture and Roman style base-relief stone plaques. He favors subjects of figures and animals caught in fluid spontaneity and his Venetian background shines through with zany Commedia dell’Arte themes. His traditional education enables him to interpret Pompeiian, Classical and Baroque subjects with brilliant virtuosity.

He currently resides in Calistoga at “Ca’ Toga”, a villa he designed and built in the style of Renaissance Italian architect Andrea Palladio. The interior of the villa is filled with Marchiori’s art. Many walls feature huge frescoes filled with mystical gods and monsters, and whole rooms are painted to look like caves or forests. The house is a remarkable monument to his versatile talents and boundless imagination.

Many pieces from Ca’ Toga and from Marchiori’s Galleria d’Arte in Calistoga will be on display at the Museo Italo Americano from March 1 through June 3, 2012.

Travel through three of Italy’s wildest and most mysterious regions – Abruzzo, Marche and Umbria – on another fantastic journey designed by our favorite Italian countess, Alessandra Gardino.  Your trip will visit the very places that inspired the great poets, Ovid and Dante!

During this twelve-day journey you will visit several secluded Apennine villages that see very few foreign tourists.  You will be amazed by the warm reception you will receive in ancient places where traditions still linger, old dress codes  are reserved and authentic age-old festivals are observed. 

Your trip will end with an optional, week long language immersion program in two of Umbria’s most beautiful hilltowns.

Presented by Montgomery and Gardino Expeditions

Price: $3,895 per person, double occupancy
Optional cancellation insurance in double room: $190 per personSingle room supplement: $680
Optional cancellation insurance in single room: $220 per person
Deposit: $500

Extension: $1,890 per person in double room

Contact the Museo at (415) 673-2200 for more details

Join artist Carlo Marchiori as he walks through his exhibit, gives insight into his creative process and talks about each piece.

Space is limited.

Please RSVP to

673-2200

illustrated lecture by Roberto Soncin Gerometta, whom you will remember from his recent photographic exhibit at the Museo, entitled “Dreams, Shapes & Colors”.  Roberto will take you on a photographic tour of his recent visit to Peru.

Please RSVP to the Museo Italo Americano at

415 673-2200

Illustrated Leonardo da Vinci Society lecture by Professor Michael Stehr who received a degree in Art History with a focus on Michelangelo and the Baroque age from Stanford.

Free to Leonardo da Vinci Society members

non-members - $ 10.00

In collaboration with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, the Museo presents Giancarlo Aquilanti and his daughter Alessandra.  Giancarlo is the director of the theory and composition program at Stanford Music Department.  They will play Aquilanti’s Sonata for Violin and his Cello Concerto and other sonatas.

The concert is free to members – non members $10

Please RSVP to 415.673.2200 as space is limited

Underwritten by the Rosaria Haugland Foundation

Untitled #17, John Grillo, 1948, Watercolor and gouache on paper, 26 x 32 inches

John Grillo was demobilized from the armed forces in the Bay-Area in 1946. Although John had extensive art training prior to WWII, he took advantage of the GI bill and enrolled in the California School of Fine Arts (has since become the San Francisco Art Institute). The school was a hotbed of avant-garde activity.

The immediate postwar years were an extremely important time in American art history. The balance of power was shifting from the “old world” to the new. It was the beginning of the first “truly homegrown art style” – Abstract Expressionism.

The roster of teachers and students at the California School of Fine Arts was extraordinarily impressive – Clifford Still, Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Richard Diebenkorn and many, many others. Even amongst this gathering of artistic royalty, John Grillo stood out. His inventiveness and creativity were consistently applauded.

Grillo has had a fine career. He has been represented and exhibited by some of the best galleries in New York – Sam Kootz, Howard Wise, Tibor de Nagy, Grace Borgenicht, Bertha Schafer and others. He has taught at several major institutions including Cal Berkeley and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

A wonderful selection of his works, spanning over three decades, will be exhibited at the Museo Italo Americano from November 18, 2011 through February 19, 2012.

“What is not well known is that Grillo’s efforts paralleled and in some cases anticipated developments in the East.  While he was in San Francisco, Grillo produced a series of paintings which, for sheer inventiveness of technique, rivaled New York’s avant-garde. In their spontaneity and dramatic intensity, many of these paintings bear the hallmarks of classic gesture painting, as it would be practiced by Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning.  What is truly remarkable is that Grillo’s work preceded any knowledge of these artists, as de Kooning had not produced his first one-man show and Kline had not yet moved into abstraction. And anyone tempted to find Grillo’s source of inspiration in Jackson Pollock should remember that Pollock was only just beginning to develop the drip technique that later would make him famous.” – Susan Landauer,  John Grillo: The San Francisco years,  Art of California 3, 1990

­

Enter the Model Italian Architecture Competition, sponsored by the Carl Gellert & Celia Berta Gellert Foundation

The Coliseum. The Pantheon. The Bridge of Sighs.  The Leaning Tower of Pisa.  Do you marvel at how it’s all built?  Do you love all things Italy?  Now you have a chance to try out your modeling skills by creating a model of famous example of Italian architecture by entering the Museo Italo Americano’s Model Italian Architecture Competition.

Find a building, church, bridge, or palazzo of your choice, model it in Google SketchUp, texture it with photographs, and submit it to the Google 3D Warehouse.  All San Francisco Middle and High School (6-12) students are welcome to enter.  There will be prizes for two age groups: Middle School (6-8) and High School (9-12)

1st Prize : $250 Amazon.com gift card + Museo Membership
2nd Prize: $150 Amazon.com gift card + Museo Membership
3rd Prize: $75 Amazon.com gift card + Museo Membership

Submit your entry by May 6, 2011.
Click here for Rules, Registration Form, Submission Procedures and Details