NICHOLAS P. BRIGANTE
1895 Padua, Italy – Los Angeles, California 1989










Nicholas P. Brigante was carried in 1897 to the United States as a toddler, settling in Los Angeles with his family. By 1911, Brigante was studying at the Los Angeles Art Students’ League and supporting himself as a sign painter – painting ‘Bull Durham’ signs on barns and fences! He served in Europe in the U.S. Army during World War I 1916-1918 and, when he returned to Los Angeles, he renewed his involvement with the Art Students’ League.In 1923 Brigante’s paintings were exhibited with the “Group of Independent Artists” – organized by Stanton Macdonald Wright – and exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum. Then he and his bride, Francesca, decamped to New York, where his watercolor paintings were hung alongside those of Charles Sheeler, Yasuo Kunioshi, Thomas Hart Benton, Charles Demuth, and John Marin at the Daniels Gallery. Upon returning to Los Angeles in 1925, Brigante and his wife built a home in the secluded Hollywood Hills. He focused his art upon the verdant Hollywood Hills, the romantic Arroyo Seco and the densely foliaged canyons. His abstract and figurative works evoked the poetic abstractions of Asian aesthetics, and ‘synchromist’ color theories. ‘Tide Pools’ , ‘Burnt Mountain’ and ‘Winds and Mists’ exemplify the abstract, intuitive work that pervaded his aesthetic expression. A master of watercolor, ink wash and sensuous line, Nick Brigante created a visual metaphor of experience found through nature that melded with his sensibilities. Click on an image to enlarge it.
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Tell me of your experiences and which images ‘speak’ to you!tobeymoss@earthlink.net For more information