Amar Gallery in London, founded by art enthusiast Amar Singh, has announced its new exhibition, Lawrence Calcagno: Redux. It features paintings and works on paper by LGBTQ+ artist Lawrence Calcagno. This is the first time many of these works have been exhibited in London, and Amar Gallery has made it possible.
Calcagno led a remarkable life, and this Amar Singh Art Gallery exhibition aims to bring a master of art back to the forefront of art history. His affair with art started in the army when he joined the United States Army Air Corps in 1941, at the beginning of World War II. He served in the forces for three years and his artistic prowess was recognised during his service there. His drawing “Watch in the Night” even won first prize in the national Army art contest in the Southwest Regional competition.
The artist, whose art inspired Amar Singh to bring it to Amar Gallery for the world to see, enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts where he learned from Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Edward Corbett, and Richard Diebenkorn. He even went to Paris to study at the L! Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, where he met his future lover Beauford Delaney. Their union was a unique one at the time as both interracial and homosexual relations were illegal throughout most of the United States then.
Amar Singh Art Gallery was founded to give a platform to LGBTQ+ artistes to showcase their work. Before this, the gallery displayed the work of artist Dora Maar with an exhibition of the rare photographs recently discovered in her estate.
