Boccia Career Survey Occupies Every Room at Central West End Gallery

Philip Slein Gallery has allocated its entire floor space in the Central West End to a career retrospective of Edward E. Boccia. The exhibition, titled Edward E. Boccia: An American Modernist, opens on October 23 and remains on view through December 19. This full-space installation is a rare occurrence for the venue, which has operated for 23 years and typically confines individual shows to its front room.

The gallery’s decision to expand the footprint reflects the scale of the artist's output. Boccia, who lived in St. Louis for six decades, produced thousands of paintings between 1951 and his death in 2012. Gallery owner Philip Slein noted the magnitude of the presentation. "The only thing that could be bigger than this would be at an institution," Slein said.

Boccia arrived at Washington University in St. Louis in 1951, where he taught for more than 30 years before retiring as a professor emeritus in 1986. His career began in New Jersey, where he was born in 1921 to Italian parents. He studied at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League in New York, later earning degrees from Columbia University after serving in the World War II Ghost Army. He also taught at the Columbus Art School in Ohio, introducing Bauhaus principles to his students.

The current exhibition displays more than 30 paintings across multiple rooms. The front room features large-scale works, including the nine-panel autobiographical polyptych "Eugene's Journey" and the 2004 triptych "David's Death." A hallway contains mythic ocean scenes, while the final room uses a salon hang to trace his stylistic evolution from the 1950s to 2012. The collection references the work of Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, and local figure Max Beckmann.

A companion volume, Edward E. Boccia: Painter of Nightmares and Dreams, publishes during the exhibition run. Hirmer will release the book, which art historian Rosa Berland wrote after 14 years of research. It is the first major monograph on the artist and includes fold-out plates that illustrate the scale of his multi-panel pieces. Berland, based in New York, described Boccia’s teaching style as rigorous but open to students finding their own creative voice.

The opening reception is scheduled for 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on October 23. The show includes a pamphlet prepared by Berland and Slein that encourages viewers to experience the art without over-analyzing its meaning. Berland credited Morton D. May, whose collection is partly housed at the Saint Louis Art Museum, as Boccia's greatest patron. She characterized the artist as a polymath who studied philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis, and history while maintaining an experimental approach to painting.