What defines a nation’s spirit? Is it found in its landscapes, revealed in its art, or carried forward in its restless pursuit of innovation? For me, the story of America is one of possibility—of bold ideas, uncharted horizons, and individuals who dared to dream. That spirit is captured in the exhibition of American art now on display at Villa Taverna, my residence as the U.S. Ambassador to Italy and San Marino.

From Frederic Remington’s vivid portrayals of the American West to Roy Lichtenstein’s bold lines, these works embody the creativity and courage that helped shape the United States. They reflect a nation built not only on freedom, but also on ambition—on forging new paths, imagining new worlds, and embracing the unknown. In John Singer Sargent’s portraits, we see elegance and humanity; in Hans Hofmann’s color and abstraction, we feel the pulse of American innovation.  Read More

Frederick Carl Frieseke’s paintings often depicted women at leisure in light-filled, floral surroundings. Girl in Blue Arranging Flowers captures one such moment, with the deftly painted blue-striped fabric of the woman’s dress echoing the European blue-and-white ceramics atop the fireplace mantel. Glimpsed in the mirror’s reflection, the lush sunlit garden outside merges graphically with the colorful flowers on the mantel. Sunbath, an outdoor scene, was exhibited at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, where Frieseke won the grand prize and a gold medal. Read More

Adolph Gottlieb was a leading member of the abstract expressionists, an informal circle of artists who brought American painting and sculpture into the limelight in midcentury New York. As exemplified by his Burst series, including Penumbra, Gottlieb reduced his compositions to two essential components: a radiant red circle floating above a dense maze of black brushstrokes and spatters. The rival forms—one serene and heavenly, the other turbulent and expressive—can be understood as essential and complementary pairs: order and chaos, female and male, or heaven and earth. Read More

Cleve Gray brought a profound knowledge of both Western and Chinese art history to his explorations of lyrical abstraction. After attending Princeton University, he was an artist-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome, an experience reflected in this untitled canvas. The golden ground echoes the stucco facades of Rome’s older buildings, while the overall composition evokes the dynamics of still-life arrangements. The division of space along the lower margin is further animated by the interplay of solid color blocks, transparent planes, and an energetic graphic tension. Read More

While Childe Hassam’s most famous series of artworks remains his flag paintings created during World War I, throughout his career, he increasingly focused on the landscapes of New Hampshire and Maine. Here, the artist captures a light-filled afternoon scene in southeastern New Hampshire using his characteristically vibrant palette and dynamic brushwork. Read More

Hans Hofmann’s career as an artist, teacher, and writer bridged the European avant-garde and abstract expressionism in the United States. Summer Over the Land is typical of the radiant palette and loose brushwork featured in his later paintings, here evoking the shimmering heat of midsummer. Hofmann always maintained that abstract principles governed his compositions: “Like the picture surface, color has an inherent life of its own. A picture comes into existence on the basis of the interplay of this dual life. In the act of predominance and assimilation, colors love or hate each other, thereby helping to make the creative intention of the artist possible.” Read More

Roy Lichtenstein was among the innovators of pop art—a movement that flourished in the 1960s as artists turned away from gestural abstraction and embraced an aesthetic rooted in popular culture. A native New Yorker, Lichtenstein came of age during the height of abstract expressionism; however, cartoon characters soon began to appear in his work, and by 1961 he had adopted the bold lines, primary palette, and dramatic scenarios of comic-strip illustrations.

Modular Banner typifies this shift. Here, he incorporates the formal vocabulary of comic strips, including the blue Ben-Day dots seen here. Read More

Morris Louis was a pioneer of color field painting—a movement that succeeded abstract expressionism in the 1950s. Floral exemplifies his command of stain-painting techniques, in which he poured thinned acrylic across the canvas so that medium and support became one, working outward from the center as though the paint were literally “flowering” from the core of the piece. It is one of twelve paintings in the Floral series, all of which are unique for their condensed centrality and their allusion to floral imagery. Read More

In Robert Motherwell’s Three Personages, the composition is dominated by three loosely defined, ghostly forms drawn in charcoal and filled with semi-transparent washes of brilliant yellow; a fourth figure is suggested by the solid black form on the right. It is part of a larger series he titled The Hollow Men, inspired by T.S. Eliot’s poem of the same name. Motherwell commented on this series: “I’m groping for a way of synthesizing a lifetime of work—driving further what I find most valuable and dropping parts that seem less essential.” Read More

Born in San Antonio, Texas, to a family of creatives and painters, Julian Onderdonk moved to New York at the age of nineteen to study with William Merritt Chase, one of the leaders of American impressionism. After working in New York as an artist for a few years, Onderdonk returned to San Antonio with his wife and daughter. The first artist to devote significant attention to the Texas Hill Country, he became known for his landscapes, particularly those depicting the state’s characteristic bluebonnet flowers. Early Spring—Bluebonnets and Mesquite and A Road through the Bluebonnets are small, intimate panel paintings that typify Onderdonk’s remarkable ability to convey the essence of his home state through its natural world.

Frederic Remington built his reputation as a historian-artist and contemporary chronicler of the American West through his illustrations for books and periodicals. Harper’s Weekly published Remington’s first commercial illustration in 1882, establishing a partnership that would last for fifteen years. The Mule Pack was the final Remington image published in Harper’s, marking the end of their relationship. Read More

Equally devoted to performance and painting, Kikuo Saito bridged several worlds across a career that spanned two continents. A native of Japan, he arrived in New York in 1966 with a background in theater and pursued a style of performance art that synthesized choreography, set design, and costume with poetry. Saito simultaneously began to build a career in the visual arts, working as a studio assistant to New York’s abstract artists. Read More

One of the foremost portrait painters of the late nineteenth century, John Singer Sargent was known for capturing piercing likenesses of prominent sitters with lively brushwork and rich color. By the early twentieth century, however, he had grown tired of high-society portraiture and turned his attention to artistic genres that brought him more personal pleasure. During this time, Sargent produced small-scale graphite portraits and plein air paintings. He embarked on numerous trips to Venice, rendering the city’s architecture and waterways in both oil and in watercolor. This composition, verging on abstraction, shows a view of the city’s iconic Doge’s Palace. Read More

Clark Greenwood Voorhees was trained as a chemist, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University in Connecticut and a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University in New York. At the close of the nineteenth century, Voorhees spent several years in Europe studying art in France and the Netherlands. During this time, he became familiar with the work of Théodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet, who were among the founders of the Barbizon School—a prominent artistic community that flourished from around 1830 to 1870. The school’s emphasis on the natural landscape had a long-lasting impact on him. Upon returning to the United States, he became a member of the Old Lyme Art Colony in Connecticut. Read More