Antonio Petruccelli: Rediscovering a Modernist, the new online exhibition from Helicline Fine Art, is extended through September 6, 2023 due to continued interest.

The exhibition features four dozen published cover illustrations for Fortune, The New Yorker, House Beautiful and Colliers, cover proposals and drawings for Vanity Fair, Life, Lamp and others. The work spans the 1930s through the 60s and will be available for acquisition at Helicline Fine Art.

The Fortune magazine cover was his great platform from 1933 to 1945. Petruccelli created 28 memorable covers with characteristic precision, wit and imaginative contributions that made full use of dense color. The images he devised were entirely his own, innovative for the time, and seemed to owe little to the work of his contemporaries. An early training in textile design supplied him with an eye for the possibilities of repeating images and a flair for unusually rhythmic compositions. Many images suggest an intuitive understanding of the dynamics of Italian Futurism combined with an Art Deco sensibility.

Petruccelli was an artist of modest ego who didn’t promote his work. He provided for his family by creating sensational paintings that were used as magazine covers and interior illustrations that the world saw. He painted for himself, but only rarely.

Antonio Petruccelli is typical of a certain generation of visually innovative American artists whose reputation suffered from an association with creating images for the public in magazines and books.

(Kirk Petruccelli, the artist’s grandson)

Helicline Fine Art is proud to reintroduce the world to the inspired work of this great and relatively unknown modern artist. We saw Petruccelli‘s works in a New Jersey gallery more than a decade ago and have been asking the family to allow us to mount a full exhibition honoring Antonio ever since. We are thrilled to bring this first-rate artist back in the public’s consciousness.

(Keith Sherman, gallery owner)

Antonio Petruccelli (1907-1994) began his career as a textile designer. He became a freelance illustrator in 1932 after winning several House Beautiful cover illustration contests. In addition to 24 Fortune magazine covers, four New Yorker covers, several for House Beautiful, Collier’s, and other magazines he did numerous illustrations for Life magazine from the 1930s – 60s. ‘Tony was Mr. Versatility for Fortune. He could do anything, from charts and diagrams to maps, illustrations, covers, and caricatures,’ said Francis Brennan, the former art director for Fortune. Over the course of his career, Antonio won several important design awards, designing a U.S. Postage Stamp Commemorating the Steel Industry and designing the Bicentennial Medal for the Franklin Mint for the State of New Jersey.