Salvatore Del Deo is a painter engaged in a spirited dialogue with his work, responding to the deep questions presented by the paintings themselves. It is this challenge that has held Del Deo’s passion through the over fifty years of his painting career and has resulted in an immense and diverse body of work. His is a style that seems to traverse the continuum from the realistic to the abstract, with a natural fluidity available only to one who is thoroughly centered. Del Deo has painted all the familiar scenes of his life at land’s end – fish, dunes, figures on the back beach, boats moored at the town wharf, trap sheds and lighthouses – made new for the viewer through the painter’s rich palette and soulful perspective. It is as if he is focusing long-stored energy through the lens of pure color – the color concentrated, coagulated by that intense focus.
Salvatore Del Deo grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and attended the Rhode Island School of Design, the Vesper George School of Art in Boston, and the Art Students League in New York, where he studied with Edwin Dickinson and John McPherson. As a young painter, he began attending Henry Hensche’s summer classes in Provincetown, setting up his easel on the bay beach. In 1954, Del Deo settled permanently in Provincetown.
