John DiPaolo: A Forty-Year Retrospective

The San Francisco based artist John DiPaolo (b. 1946) is one of the U.S.'s leading, contemporary abstract artists. Over the last forty years, he has pushed the limits of abstract painting that move and engage viewers rather than cater to the style's most common presuppositions. In doing so, he has imbued a storied, mid-20th century artistic movement with new energy and life, rendering it relevant and fresh in the immediate moment. A native of Brooklyn, New York, DiPaolo moved to San Francisco in 1971 to attend San Francisco Art Institute and, later San Francisco State University. Though many Northern California artists such as David Park and Elmer Bischoff had largely abandoned pure abstraction in favor of figuration by the 1960s, a strong contingent was influenced by artists and teachers such as Sam Tchakalian, Julius Hatovsky, and Jack Jefferson, DiPaolo grew interested in exploring abstraction and materiality as a means of expanding the boundaries of his own art practice. Moving beyond limiting contours of the visible world, DiPaolo saw how abstraction's raw, elemental architecture could potentially mobilize the type of physical, experimental engagement he sought in his art. Published on the occasion of DiPaolo's seventh solo exhibition with Dolby Chadwick Gallery, John DiPaolo; A forty-Year Retrospective takes readers through key events in DiPaolo's life and career. A collection of over seventy images presents a stunning visual record of paintings made between the 1970s and 2012. This book serves as an important testament to the formal and critical trajectory of DiPaolo's impressive career.