Osvaldo Louis Guglielmi

Born in Cairo, Egypt, as a child he lived in Milan and Geneva while his Italian father, a professional violinist, toured the world. In 1914 his parents brought him to the United States, where they lived in Italian Harlem, New York. He was interested in sculpture at a young age and worked at a casting factory. He attended the National Academy of Design in the evening beginning in 1920, while also attending high school, and attended full-time from 1923 to 1926. The next year he became a naturalized citizen. The Great Depression brought financial hardship, but the difficult times inspired his artwork. From 1935 to 1939, he worked with the Federal Art Project, which supported artists during the Depression. In the 1930s he spent many summers at the MacDowell Colony for artists in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Guglielmi was part of the 1943 "American Realists and Magic Realists" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. He was with the Army Corps of Engineers in the war between 1943 and 1945, and did not paint. In the 1950s, he held positions at Louisiana State University, first as a visiting artist and then as an associate professor. He died in 1956 of a heart attack in Amagansett, New York.

Guglielmi's work is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.