St. Louis gallery uses every room for Edward Boccia retrospective

Galleries in the Central West End rarely expand a single artist's display beyond the primary exhibition room. Philip Slein Gallery has broken that convention to house the complete retrospective of Edward E. Boccia. The exhibition, titled Edward E. Boccia: An American Modernist, opens October 23 and remains on view through December 19.

The gallery occupies the entire space at 4735 McPherson Avenue. Owner Philip Slein noted that individual shows typically occupy only the front room. For this survey of Boccia's career, the walls in every section hold works. Slein described the scale as the largest the gallery has hosted, stating that only an institutional venue could present a larger collection.

Boccia was born in New Jersey in 1921 and spent six decades in St. Louis. He worked as a painter, academic, and veteran of the World War II Ghost Army. After studying at Pratt Institute and the Art Students League in New York, he earned degrees from Columbia University. He taught at Columbus Art School in Ohio before joining Washington University in St. Louis in 1951.

He remained at Washington University for more than 30 years, retiring in 1986 as professor emeritus. Art historian Rosa Berland, based in New York, characterized his teaching style as rigorous while encouraging students to find their own creative direction. Boccia continued producing art until his death in 2012 at age 91. Slein observed that the painter was constantly drawing when not sleeping or eating.

The exhibition displays more than 30 paintings from various periods of his life. The front room features large-scale pieces, including the nine-panel autobiographical work Eugene's Journey and the 2004 triptych David's Death. A hallway contains mythic scenes of ocean journeys and figures with inner light. The final room presents a salon wall arrangement that traces his artistic evolution from a 1950s portrait to a piece painted in 2012.

Influences from Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, Renaissance masters, and Max Beckmann appear throughout the collection. A companion book, Edward E. Boccia: Painter of Nightmares and Dreams, will be published by Hirmer during the show. Berland wrote the text after 14 years of research. It serves as the first major monograph on the artist and includes scholarly essays and fold-out plates to show the scale of his multi-panel works.

Berland described Boccia as a polymath who studied philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis, and history. A pamphlet for the show includes his instruction to viewers to experience the art without worrying about its specific meaning. She credited Morton D. May as Boccia's greatest patron. May's collection was gifted in part to the Saint Louis Art Museum. Berland summarized the narrative as the story of a New York native who found success in St. Louis.

Berland argued that such complex work requires engagement on multiple levels. She compared the viewing experience to reading a poem or a philosophical text, noting that people rarely slow down in modern life.