American Art Collaborative

Painter, engraver, printmaker and educator; Buffalo and New York, N.Y. and Chicago, Ill. b. 1903, Boston, Mass.; d. 1993, Glencoe, Ill.; Studied at the Massachusetts School of Art, the Beaux Arts Institute of Design, under artist Robert Laurent at the Art Students League, and at the Americacn Artists School under Ben Shahn. He had the first exhibition of his oil paintings ath the Art Center in New York City, 1933. In the 1940s, Calapai worked in the Atelier 17 printmaking workshop. He created a hugely successful portfolio of wood engravings inspired by the Thomas Wolfe play "Look Homeward Angel". Calapai also founded and chaired the Graphic Arts Department of the Albright Art School in Buffalo from 1949-1955 and taught at various universities and colleges, including the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, the New School for Social Research, and New York University. He also established the Intaglio Workshop for Advanced Printmaking in Greenwich Village. He later left New York to teach at the University of Illinois, where he established a training studio and gallery.