Lo Pinto, Ferdinand (1906-1980)

Lo Pinto was the son of Italian immigrants in New York City, his father a physician. After attending the National Academy of Design and taking classes at the Art Students League, he exhibited at venues like the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, the De Young Memorial Museum, the Corcoran Gallery, and the Carnegie Institute, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Lo Pinto also studied with the sculptor David Smith, whose geometric designs appear to have influenced his NDG painting. Lo Pinto’s landscape “Evening” received favorable mention at a Federal Art Project show in 1937. In 1937 he was one of a dozen artists who traveled to Alaska under WPA auspices resulting, in addition to several paintings, numerous illustrations for Merle Colby’s Alaska: A Guide to Last American Frontier. During the 1930s Lo Pinto created two murals: one for the “Hall of Man” at the 1939 World’s Fair at New York, the other for the Federal Court House in Anchorage, AK. He also created several stage sets for the Federal Theater Project in New York. Lo Pinto relocated to Allentown, PA during the 1950s and seems to have begun work for Hess’s department stores as a designer. 1 work at Smithsonian American Art Museum. 14 more images at FAP.


Source consulted: Archives of askART, including family papers courtesy of the artist's niece, Kathleen Lo Pinto Vignolini

Works in the New Deal Collection at GVCA by Ferdinand Lo Pinto:

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Seascape
Seascape

It’s not impossible to render Lo Pinto’s scene in everyday terms: moored in a marina are several boats, two of them accessed by floating docks upon which a group of children are passing time dreamily. To describe it in such terms, however, would ignore the painting’s many surreal, even mystical elements. Why are some boats in full sail? Why do chains of rowboats—one in the foreground and four more in the distance—create angles in relation to the gangways? Do the colors here have any existence in the waking world?

lo pintoGVCA