Boccia retrospective fills all three rooms of Central West End gallery

Philip Slein Gallery has occupied its entire physical footprint for the first time in nearly a quarter-century to host a career survey of Edward E. Boccia. The exhibition, titled Edward E. Boccia: An American Modernist, opens with a reception on October 23 and runs through December 19.

Gallery owner Philip Slein said the scale of the show is exceptional. "This is a very significant show," Slein said. "The only thing that could be bigger than this would be at an institution." For 23 years, the gallery at 4735 McPherson in the Central West End has typically reserved only its front room for individual artists. This installation extends into the hallway and the rear room, a rare deviation from the venue's standard layout.

The display includes more than 30 paintings produced by Boccia, who lived in St. Louis for six decades. The front room features large-scale works, including the nine-panel autobiographical polyptych "Eugene's Journey" and the 2004 triptych "David's Death." The latter is one of several pieces that meditate on the death of Boccia's son. The hallway showcases mythic scenes of ocean journeys, while the final room contains a salon wall that traces his stylistic evolution from a 1950s portrait to a work painted in 2012, shortly before his death.

Boccia was born in New Jersey in 1921 to Italian parents. He served in the World War II Ghost Army and studied at the Pratt Institute, the Art Students League, and Columbia University. He joined the faculty at Washington University in 1951, where he taught for more than 30 years before retiring as professor emeritus in 1986. Art historian Rosa Berland, who is based in New York, described his teaching style as rigorous but open to students finding "their own kind of fire."

The artist continued working until his death in 2012 at age 91. Slein noted that Boccia produced thousands of paintings, ranging from small seaside scenes to monumental multi-panel works. "If he wasn't sleeping or eating, he was drawing," Slein said. His style draws on classical traditions and the work of figures such as Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, and Max Beckmann.

A companion book, Edward E. Boccia: Painter of Nightmares and Dreams, will be published by Hirmer during the exhibition. Written by Berland after 14 years of research, it is the first major monograph on the artist. The volume includes dozens of images, several fold-out plates, and scholarly essays. Berland credited Morton D. May, whose collection was gifted in part to the Saint Louis Art Museum, as Boccia's greatest patron.

Berland described Boccia as a polymath who studied philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis, and history. She said the work demands engagement on several levels. "We don't slow down anymore," she said, comparing the experience to reading a poem or a philosophical text. The pamphlet prepared for the show includes the instruction: "Don't worry about what my art means. Just experience it."