17 Facts About Allan D'Arcangelo

Allan D'Arcangelo was an American artist and printmaker, best known for his paintings of highways and road signs that border on pop art and minimalism, precisionism and hard-edge painting, and surrealism.

Allan D'Arcangelo was born in Buffalo, New York to Italian immigrant parents.

Allan D'Arcangelo studied at the University at Buffalo from 1948 to 1953, where he got his bachelor's degree in history.

However, throughout his life, D'Arcangelo remained politically active, and this is evident in his painting, though not necessarily in an overt way.

Allan D'Arcangelo first achieved recognition in 1962, when he was invited to contribute an etching to The International Anthology of Contemporary Engraving: America Discovered; his first solo exhibition came the next year, at the Thibaud Gallery in New York City.

Allan D'Arcangelo was well known for his paintings of quintessentially American highways and infrastructure, and in 1971 was commissioned by the Department of the Interior to paint the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state.

Allan D'Arcangelo retired to a farm in Kenoza Lake with his family, where he continued to paint and even make earth works.

Allan D'Arcangelo was considered a figure who straddled the lines between many styles of art and was hard to categorize.

Allan D'Arcangelo rejected Abstract Expressionism, though his early work has a painterly and somewhat expressive feel.

Allan D'Arcangelo quickly turned to a style of art that seemed to border on Pop Art and Minimalism, Precisionism and Hard-Edge painting.

Allan D'Arcangelo is better known for his pictures of highways and roadblocks, which pictured deep perspectival vistas in a simplified, flat plane, the view as seen from the driver's seat as one zooms along the seemingly never-ending American highway in most any state.

Allan D'Arcangelo was initially interested in painting these scenes in a series, like a film strip, as the view changes outside your car window.

Allan D'Arcangelo was actually critiqued for these paintings as much as he was celebrated; Pop Art was considered a flat style, lacking perspectival plays of space.

For several years during this time, Allan D'Arcangelo slowed down his formerly prolific output.

Allan D'Arcangelo shed highway motifs completely and turned, instead, to cropped views of buildings and other structures, containers, and views outside of an airplane.

Now, as before, the main element in Allan D'Arcangelo's pictures is the post-abstraction search for, as he put it, "icons that matter", monumental archetypes of the contemporary American expansive landscape highway.

Allan D'Arcangelo's work is found in the permanent collections of major museums and other public institutions worldwide.