Anthony Angarola

Anthony Angarola was a first-generation Italian immigrant, born in Chicago, Illinois, on February 4, 1893. He graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He held teaching positions at Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, the Minneapolis School of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and later became an art instructor at the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) between 1926-1929. In 1927, Angarola became the director of the Department of Painting and Drawing at KCAI. Two of his noted students were William S. Schwartz and Belle Baranceanu.

He was known for his modernist style and urban landscapes; he painted human figures, daily life, nature and local scenes, social realism, cityscapes. Angarola participated in the Midwestern Artists' Exhibition held at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1927 and 1928, as well as many other exhibitions, including the Carnegie International Exposition in 1928. Angarola received several awards for his art, such as the Frederick Magnus Prize in Color Composition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1916; in 1917 he was awarded the William O. Goodman Prize for a group of paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago; in 1925 he was awarded the Silver Medal for his painting Norwegian Village, voted by Chicago Artists' Society at the Art Institute of Chicago. On August 15, 1929, at the early age of thirty-six, Anthony Angarola died. His work is represented at many museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Carnegie Institute, and the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in Boston.