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ITALO SCANGA (1932-2001)

Italo Scanga, a world-renowned artist and art professor in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego, died July 27 in his Pacific Beach studio of heart failure. He was 69 years old.

A memorial service for Scanga will take place Saturday, August 4, at 2 p.m. at the Faculty Club (north of the Mandeville Center) on the UCSD La Jolla campus.

Scanga, a native of Calabria, Italy, was celebrated throughout the art world for his ebullient constructions and his fluency across the spectrum of art media. His creations in sculpture, painting, printmaking, glass and ceramics are in numerous museum collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His major solo exhibitions have appeared in museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Fine Art in Boston and the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City.

A member of the UCSD Visual Arts Department since 1978, Scanga sustained an extraordinary level of achievement as an artist who exhibited widely, as a teacher and mentor, and as a community visionary. His former students include such artists as Bruce Naumann, Dan Faham, and Iza Lou. Last summer, Scanga and glass artist Dale Chihuly were visual artists-in-residence at the SummerFest in La Jolla. Early this year, in a review of “Animal Surprise,” his show of cast bronzes at the Larry Becker Gallery in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Weekly wrote, “His work is filled with a palpable reverence for life.”

“Italo Scanga's life was built on a foundation of passionate acts and searches,” said UCSD Visual Arts Professor Ernest Silva. “He restlessly and profoundly looked, read, talked, collected, cooked, listened to music, loved and worked in his studio. His paintings, sculptures, glassworks and all manner of his extraordinary productivity were a constant stream of images – found, altered, re-created. They were his way of embracing all that we are born into.”

Throughout his career, Scanga’s art was imbued with a love of icons (a favorite motif was an Italian cypress tree), a bold palette, and playful integration of salvaged objects, from shells found on the beach to trinkets picked up at flea markets. In a 1984 profile in ARTNews, Scanga remarked, “I have no prejudices about influences or stimuli. I can get them from anywhere: photography, African art, primitive art, Greek sculpture, Renaissance painting, Expressionist art, I love it.”

At age 14, Scanga immigrated with his family to the United States, where they settled in Detroit. From 1951 to 1953, he studied at Detroit’s Society of Arts and Crafts before serving two years with the U.S. Army in Austria. Following his discharge, he enrolled at Michigan State University where he received his BA and MFA in sculpture (1961). He taught at the University of Wisconsin, Rhode Island School of Design, Penn State, and the Tyler School of Art before a stint as a visiting professor at UCSD in 1976-77 led to a permanent faculty post.

After settling in San Diego, Scanga became a beloved local figure who lectured at area schools and displayed his work in public libraries and other community settings. Major public commissions include works in Mammola, Italy, San Jose, CA, Minneapolis, MN, and San Diego, CA. He twice won National Endowment for the Arts grants (1973 and 1980) and was honored by Michigan State University with its Distinguished Alumni Award in 1989.

Scanga is survived by his companion of 10 years, Su-Mei Yu; his five children, Anthony Scanga of Glenside, PA; Katherine Scanga of Riverside, R.I.; Sarah Scanga of Charlottesville, VA; Joseph Scanga of San Francisco; and William Scanga of New York City; and four grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, his family has asked that donations be made to the Italo Scanga Memorial Scholarship Fund (make check payable to the UC San Diego Foundation), c/o Nancy Mah, UCSD Visual Arts Department, 9500 Gilman Drive, #0327, La Jolla, CA 92093-0327.