Paul Spina
Birth Date: October 9, 1937
Death Date: June 20, 2017
Artist Gallery
Paul Spina was born on October 9, 1937, in Brooklyn, New York to an Italian working class family in the Greenpoint neighborhood, which was predominantly Polish. During this period, ethnic tensions ran high and Paul’s Italian family often felt the effects. As a result, Spina’s artwork was heavily influenced by his childhood and the fraught tensions from his neighborhood. In addition, Spina’s highly autobiographical paintings and drawings tell the story of growing up during World War II and bearing witness to the horrific personal war testimonies of his uncles, then serving in the Armed Forces abroad. Spina’s work incorporated both Surrealism and Pop Art and utilized recurring iconographic themes including war (especially military aircraft and WWII references), weapons of destruction, propaganda, consumerism, sharks, businessmen, women, and the 21st Century Fox logo. He is perhaps best known for his signature incorporation of “Good & Plenty” candies, which he enjoyed during trips to the cinema with his father as a child. Going to the movies with his father – many times to watch World War II dramas – and eating Good & Plenty candy, provided an escape and diversion from the heaviness of the era. Most of his work centered on this juxtaposition between innocence and terror, using the Good & Plenty candies to counterbalance the heavier subject matter and “candy coat” the horrors lurking underneath. In the late 1950s, Spina enrolled at Pratt Institute in New York where he studied with artists Richard Lindner, Philip Pearlstein, and Jacob Lawrence. In 1960, he received a full scholarship to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine where he studied with artist Alex Katz. Spina returned to Skowhegan during the summer of 1962 to further his studies and then traveled to Japan where he studied painting, drawing, and woodcut printmaking. Spina settled in the Soho district of New York City, where he was one of the first artists in a district that would evolve into the heart of the 1960s/1970s New York art community. Here Spina was an active participant, creating pop up galleries to exhibit his work and that of other New York artists. Beginning in the 1960s and continuing throughout most of his career, Spina worked as a freelance illustrator. His work has been included in numerous well-known publications such as “New York Magazine,” “The New York Times,” “National Review,” “Doubleday,” and “Harper.” During 1966, he spent several months traveling and studying throughout Italy and Greece to further develop his craft. Returning to New York, Spina was hired as an adjunct professor of general illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York City where he worked from 1967-1970. Throughout the 1970s, Spina worked as a freelance author and illustrator for children’s books published by Harper and Row and in 1971, he received a Citation for Merit award from the Society of Illustrators for his work published in the New York Times. In 1974, Spina was hired as an adjunct professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, where he would continue to teach general illustration for over three decades. Also, in the mid-1970s, Spina created a story line and series of cat woodcuts which were assembled into a 1977 calendar, titled “Molotov’s Tale.” In the late 1970s, Spina moved to a loft on the Bowery in Chinatown in New York. He would remain in this loft, which faced the street and featured large windows and high ceilings, for the next three decades, utilizing the loft’s features to create oversized paintings, drawings, sketches, and assemblages. It was during this time and into the early 1980s that the “Good & Plenty” imagery first appeared in his work.. His earliest use of the candies was to conceal, obscure, and obliterate visual elements. During the mid-1980s, Spina shifted away from faithfully reproducing the iconic pink and white color of the “Good & Plenty” candies, and began shifting towards a multicolor palette determined by each individual work. He also produced his largest collection of drawings during this decade, called, “The Crosshatch Series,” consisting of twenty-nine works, where Spina used a network of crisscrossing black ink lines, often surrounding a central chaotic scene as a border or other structuring element. The series is subdued, primarily using dark colors with some bright pops for emphasis. In about half of the series, the “Good & Plenty” candies are incorporated, often as additional framing or as a background layer. In 1997, Spina’s work was included in the annual Faculty Show at the Fashion Institute of Technology. In 2001, as a resident of New York City, Spina witnessed the horrors of the September 11th attacks on the United States from the roof of his Bowery loft. Disturbed by the events, Spina chose to express his feelings through his work. One of his last known drawings, “DANGER LIVES HAVE BEEN LOST HERE,” was created in response to the attacks on 9/11. Over the decades, Spina created hundreds of paintings, drawings, 3D works, and illustrations. His career was halted in 2010 when illness, including hand tremors and numbness resulting from an aortic aneurysm prohibited him from creating works with the precision and technique of his usual caliber. Due to these complications, Spina stopped working almost entirely. He retired from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2010, concluding his thirty-six year teaching career. As his health continued to decline, Spina and his partner, Ester Trepal, decided to move to Ohio in 2016, in order to pursue a quieter life. On June 20, 2017, Paul Spina passed away in Cleveland, Ohio. Spina’s work is currently held in public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Society of Illustrators in New York City, the MIT List Visual Art Center in Massachusetts, and the Canton Museum of Art, as well as in numerous private collections.