A Passion for Place

Maine Art Gallery honors painter Joseph Fiore on the 100th anniversary of his birth

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Joseph Fiore (1925-2008), Rocks and Surf, ca.1979, Oil on board, 10 x 8 in.

In 1946, after serving in World War II, Cleveland-born Joseph Fiore (1925-2008) decided to attend at the wildly progressive and experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he studied under Josef Albers, Ilya Bolotowsky and Willem de Kooning. He remained involved with the school, first as a student and, later, as a teacher, until its closure in 1957.

That same year, Fiore moved to New York City where he showed his work alongside prominent members of the 10th Street Art Scene. Soon thereafter, Fiore purchased a farm in Maine where he spent the next 50 summers.

In the summer of 1961, six artists with studios in New York City and Maine—Fiore and his contemporaries Lois Dodd, Charles DuBack, Joseph Fiore, Wolf Kahn, Alex Katz and Bernard Langlais—participated in Maine Art Gallery's Second August Invitational Exhibition.

Sixty-four years later, and 100 years since his birth, the nonprofits Maine Art Gallery and Maine Farmland Trust have come together to celebrate Fiore’s legacy, as an artist and conservationist, with Fiore at 100: Maine Observed.

Curated by accomplished Maine watercolorist David Dewey, who cites Fiore as a friend and mentor, the exhibition features approximately 40 paintings in oil, watercolor, pastel and collage spanning the mid-1950s to the early 2000s that showcase the versatility of a landscape painter who moved seamlessly between the representational and abstract.

In her catalog essay, Suzette McAvoy writes, “The vividly colored Yellow Landscape, 1957-58