Seattle artist Francis Celentano’s latest exhibition New Paintings presents mesmerizing images that further cement his position in the history of and resurgent interest in Op Art. In this show, Celentano’s acrylic paintings involve the concept of overlapping patterns and the results of their intersections. The surfaces on which he paints include triangles, circles and rectangles, with pattern juxtapositions applied in an electrifying range of color, including orange, yellow, blue, green, red, black and white. Celentano moved to Seattle from New York in the 1960s to become Professor of Painting at the University of Washington. It is here he began to develop his interest in color theory. Rather than using color in a traditional manner, to depict something else, he immersed himself in its theories, developing ideas in hard edge painting and optical art. Resonance can be found between his work and that of other notable Op artists like Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely.
After receiving his MA from New York University in 1957, Francis Celentano studied in Rome with a Fulbright in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts. He has exhibited work since 1958. In recent years, his work has been included in exhibitions examining the Op movement of the 20th century, including Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s, at the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, and After Image: Op Art of the 1960s, Jacobsen Howard Gallery, New York. The Hallie Ford Museum, Willamette University, Salem, OR presented a major retrospective of Celentano’s work in 2010. His work is in numerous collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Seattle Art Museum, WA; Stedlijk Museum, Schiedam, Holland; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; Albright Knox Museum, Buffalo, New York; and the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington.
Born in 1928, Francis Celentano has been exhibiting hard-edge abstraction for the past 51 years; he was a pioneer of Op Art and has steadfastly tended that movement's torch as other fashions burgeoned and faded. With a seemingly inexhaustible invention he has expanded the lexicon of geometric painting in its infinitude of pattern-based variations.