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Former LSU faculty member leaves behind large body of work
To me painting is the sum of experience. The dimensional problems confronting the artist, although of great importance, are but a part of the approach to art. There remains the impact of everyday living, as understood, to determine the forms necessary to the clear communication of a vital painting. The art of the masters past and present speak more eloquently than recorded history. —Conrad A. Albrizio, February 1946 For such a small man, Conrad Albrizio's works and vision are grand in scope and vast in depth. His canvas, more often than not, never fit on an easel but on an entire wall of a government building or a city block. Many,especially at LSU and around Louisiana, have probably seen his sweeping frescoes, not knowing the man behind them or even the stories being told before their eyes. But there is a story there and there is a reason Albrizio was known as one of the deans of Southern Art. Albrizio was not only a mural painter, but an architect as well, influenced by his father, who was a successful architect in his own right. He was born in 1894 in New York City, where he studied under George Luks—a pioneer in "realist" art and a vigorous opponent of academic and conservative standards in subject matter. After an extensive journey through Italy, Turkey, Spain, France, Belgium, and Mexico, Albrizio, under the influence of his father, moved to New Orleans as an architectural designer in 1920. There, he quickly became exposed to the New Orleans arts scene, forming relationships with Sherwood Anderson and William Faulkner. After a brief return to New York to resume studies at the Art Students League, he set off for Europe again where he would study what would become his legacy—the fresco. In 1929, he was commissioned by the Kingfish himself, Gov. Huey Long, to paint the murals inside the state capitol building. This led to a string of commissions from 1930 to 1940, as Albrizio painted frescoes in the post offices of DeRidder, Louisiana, and Russelville, Alabama, in the Louisiana Exposition building in Shreveport, and in the New Iberia Courthouse.
The work, though a way of life for him, soon become strenuous. Albrizio desired to focus on other artistic endeavors and in 1936 got his chance with an offer to join the LSU art faculty. Now he could develop hundreds of younger artists and, in his own time, continue his own easel painting. This he used to record his private dream worlds, albeit on ordinary-sized canvasses, not building walls. Still, the commissions continued to come his way. He completed four huge wall paintings for the old Union Passenger Terminal in New Orleans, and mosaic murals for the Supreme Court Building in the New Orleans Civic Center and the courthouse in Gretna. One critic near the end of Albrizio's career posed the question in a retrospective, "How many square feet of wall space had he covered during the course of his career?" One other commission from this time continues to hold a special place, at least in the minds of those who have studied in or even walked through the corridors of Allen Hall. In the late 1930s, Albrizio assigned five of his students to "write a composition on your reaction to the world around you without the use of words." The result was a series of images depicting the culture and economic development of Louisiana, scenes from a school library and classroom, and the fields of science and technology, agriculture, and art. Though three of the frescoes no longer exist, a 2001 celebration of the University's 75th Campus Jubilee inspired a restoration of two of the original paintings. The job was undertaken by Cheryl Elise Grenier, an LSU alumna who had worked in Italy for 18 years preserving Renaissance-period murals. After a sabbatical in 1943 in which he returned to New York to work uninterrupted on easel painting, Albrizio was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship to continue his work on canvas. This led to a one-man exhibition in 1946 at New York's Passedoit Galleries. Very quickly, he became a large figure in the New York City art scene.
By this time, his work had gone from solid representations of landscape and the world around him to surreal visions of the present. One reviewer conjectured that the holocaust of World War II had forced Albrizio to go through "landscape after landscape of nightmare horror until he finally emerged into a serene world of outer space." A stroke in the early 1950s forced Albrizio into semi-retirement from painting and full-retirement from LSU in 1954. He ceased painting frescoes but continued with his easel painting, still experimenting with the world around him. He even ruled out a large retrospective of his works, though publicly invited art connoisseurs to stop by his home and view his collection. In 1973, he died in Baton Rouge at the age of 79, leaving behind a legacy larger than any building wall or city block. Contact Josh Duplechain | LSU
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