Page 27 - Studio International - March 1965

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Alfonso Ossorio A corner of The Ossorio home. South Hampton
Help Yourself 1962 with the collector beside Help Yourself
Plastic and various media on 3
Masonite 96 x 48 in. Willem deKooning
Woman. wind. window. 1 950
2 Oil on paper 16½ x 20 in.

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his education and he remained there at public schools
until he was fourteen when his family settled per­
manently in the United States. In the United States
he matriculated at Harvard College. and it was there
that his true vocation-art-was confirmed. On
leaving Harvard in 1938 he devoted himself entirely
to painting and in 1941 held his first one-man exhibi­
tion at the Wakefield Bookstore in Manhattan. The
exhibitions at the Wakefield were at that time under the
direction of Betty Parsons. who subsequently was to
become one of America's foremost dealers in modern
art. Indeed. Mrs. Parsons has been called the discoverer
of an era; Ossorio remained with her gallery for
twenty years. In 1961 he moved to the spectacular
Cordier-Warren (now Cordier-Ekstrom). where he has
shown regularly since.
Of his first exhibition he notes ruefully that it received
not a single word of attention-and for sufficient cause:
it opened. quite literally. on the eve of Pearl Harbour.
His subsequent exhibitions have. however. been
treated more respectfully. In 1951 he showed in Paris
at the Studio Paul Facchetti under the sponsorship
of the critic Michel Tapie. The catalogue introduction­
a now famous polemic-was provided by Jean
Dubuffet. While his recent work has proved controver­
sial. each new exhibition is attended with a sense of
anticipation and discovery. Since the abortive Wakefield
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