Stephen DiCillo is an artist living and working in New York City.
Stephen DiCillo, the grandson of Italian immigrants, was born in 1952 in Quantico, Virginia, where his father, a Marine Corps officer, was based. DiCillo’s childhood was transient, with moves every two years following his father’s assignments, including stations in Carlsbad, California, and Bangkok, Thailand, on the eve of the Vietnam War.
DiCillo received his BFA in Fine Art from The University of Old Dominion in Norfolk, Va. In 1974, upon graduation and with a grant from the Virginia Museum DiCillo moved to New York City to expand his artistic horizons.
While continuing his artwork DiCillo became a member of the Off Broadway theatre company, The New York Arts Institute with Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Larry Rivers, and Kenneth Koch on the board of Trustees. Director Donald Sanders was especially interested and devoted to presenting books in their entirety on stage. DiCillo performed in Naked Lunch by William Burroughs ,Torrents of Spring by Ivan Turgenev,and The Party by Kenneth Koch. Upon leaving the Arts Institute, DiCillo devoted the next five years to perfecting his decorative painting skills while working with designer John Saladino and other top New York designers. It is during this time that DiCillo started a spiritual and introspective quest that prepared him to fully devote himself to his art. In 2001 DiCillo, evading Tribeca’s gentrification, settled in Gowanus, Brooklyn. In the past 15 years DiCillo has worked relentlessly reexamining what painting meant to him, with a decisive turn towards pure abstraction in 2007.
DiCillo’s paintings are concerned with time, space, and movement, that present to the viewer the illogicality of an existing now, that has a past that will soon be future. An invented system incorporating accident bestow the paintings with a further sense of unpredictability.
His artwork presented in shows has generated positive critical reviews from The New Yorker, Art in America, Time Out, and Review magazine. His paintings have sold internationally, most recently to the noted artist Jonathan Lasker.
Education: Old Dominion University 1970-1975
Grants
1975 Virginia Museum Scholarship
Selected Exhibitions
2009 Group show curated by Karen Dorothee Peters, Alp Galleries, New York, NY.
2002 Group show curated by painter Jonathan Lasker, Eugene Binder Gallery, New York, NY.
2001 Group show curated by Wolf-Dieter Stoffelmeier, Universal Concepts Unlimited Gallery, New York, NY.
Reviewed in Time Out magazine.
1999 “Modular Composite” group show, Central Fine Arts, New York, NY: Michael Rees, Petra Maitz, Nui Bo, Stephen DiCillo.
1998 Solo show, Central Fine Arts, New York, NY. Reviewed in Review magazine by Robert Morgan and J. Bowyer Bell.
1998 Two person show, The Clementine Gallery, New York, NY.
1994 Drop Dead painting show, curated by John Ford, 75 Reade St. Space, New York, NY.
1993 Habitations, curated by Birgit Spears, Inter Art Center Group Show, New York, NY.
1991 Two person show, Marilyn Pearl Gallery, New York, NY. Reviewed in Art in America by Robert Mahoney and recommended in The New Yorker.