Oskar

D’Amico

Oskar D’Amico died in 2003 at the age of 80, and is the only American MADI artist who is no longer living. He was born in Castelfrentano, Italy in 1923, became an American citizen, and died in Albuquerque, NM.

As a young man D’Amico studied architecture and philosophy and painted murals on the side. He was so successful with this sideline that he dropped his other interests to concentrate on painting and began working as a set designer for Federico Fellini and other directors in the Italian movie industry. In the early 1960’s he moved to New York, and soon began concentrating on abstract painting. He created a style he called “materic” in which thick layers of paint and other materials were worked into geometric patterns on huge canvases.

By the 1970’s he worked mainly with wood creating abstract constructivist works. By the early 1990’s he had aligned himself with the MADI movement and opened the first MADI gallery in the U.S., located in Albuquerque which he called Arte Struktura International.

D’Amico’s works are included in the collections of the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid and the Gyor Museum in Hungary as well as in other museums in Spain, in Italy, and in France, and in private collections in these countries as well as in Mexico, Canada, and the United States. He brought American artists Arthun, Chavez, and Maxwell to the MADI movement.