Slein Gallery Spends Two Months on One Artist

Philip Slein Gallery, located at 4735 McPherson in the Central West End, has broken with its usual practice by dedicating its entire floor space to a single exhibition. The gallery, which has operated for 23 years, typically limits individual shows to its front room. For the duration of this run, all three rooms are occupied by the work of St. Louis painter Edward E. Boccia.

The exhibition, titled Edward E. Boccia: An American Modernist, opens with a reception on October 23 and continues through December 19. Gallery owner Philip Slein noted that this is the largest show he has mounted in his career. He stated that only an institutional venue could potentially surpass the scale of this presentation.

Boccia, who was born in New Jersey in 1921, moved to St. Louis in 1951 after serving in the World War II Ghost Army and studying at the Pratt Institute, the Art Students League, and Columbia University. He taught at Washington University for more than 30 years, retiring in 1986 as a professor emeritus. Curator Rosa Berland described his teaching style as rigorous but encouraging of individual expression.

The retrospective includes more than 30 paintings that span his career, which ended with his death in 2012 at age 91. The front room features large-scale works, including the nine-panel piece Eugene's Journey and the 2004 triptych David's Death. A hallway displays mythic ocean scenes, while the final room contains a salon wall that traces his stylistic evolution from the 1950s to 2012. Slein described Boccia as a dedicated worker, noting that the artist was constantly drawing whenever he was not sleeping or eating.

Hirmer will publish a companion monograph titled Edward E. Boccia: Painter of Nightmares and Dreams during the exhibition. Written by Berland after 14 years of research, the book is the first major study of the artist. It includes scholarly essays, historical overviews, and fold-out plates that illustrate the scale of his multi-panel works.

Berland identified Morton D. May, whose collection is partly held by the Saint Louis Art Museum, as Boccia's most important patron. She characterized the artist's life as a narrative of a New York native who found professional success in the Midwest. The show emphasizes the complexity of Boccia's surreal and symbolic imagery, which draws on influences including Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, and Max Beckmann.