Vincent Castagnacci

Vincent Casagnacci is a painter with studios in Pinckney, Michigan, and Gloucester, Massachusetts. From 1959 to 1962, he studied drawing, painting and printmaking at the Boston Museum School as well as being tutored in drawing and sculpture by George Demetrios. He also pursued studies with Professor Alfredo Barilli in Rome.

While a student at Yale, Castagnacci served as an instructor in basic design at Southern Connecticut State College. From 1966 to 1973, he was an associate professor at Old Dominion University. He joined the University of Michigan faculty in 1973.

Castagnacci’s abstract work - in painting, printmaking and drawing - has been centered in the principle of variational development. Through his art, he articulates a personal geometry and communicates a strong sense of tectonic values. His five-year collaboration with percussionist and composer Michael Gould has most recently produced Into the Quarry, an installation celebrating the convergence of art and music in space and time. In addition, he has lectured and published widely in this country, in Rome at L'Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, and at the Gebaudelehre, Technische Universitat in Vienna.

Castagnacci has received numerous grants and fellowships from the University of Michigan and other funding sources. In 1980, he was awarded a citation and grant from the American Academy in Rome, where he spent nine months as a visiting artist. In 1999, he was named Arthur F. Thurnau Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts, one of the highest honors awarded to U-M teaching faculty. Most recently, he was a Mellon Scholar at Kalamazoo College.

Castagnacci has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, both in the U.S. and abroad. In 1996, Hope College mounted a retrospective exhibit, CASTAGNACCI: Works 1968-1995,which is documented in an extensive catalog.