By Carol Gordon Wood

The artist comments that her portrait The Senator: Olga Mendez shows “the many faces” of the subject: “The main image is Olga at her best as she speaks with dramatic emphasis at a public rally.” The secondary images show her “in her office in deep thought, and on the phone, communicating with her constituents.? As she is a Native Puerto Rican, there is a Coat of Arms depicting that derivation.” Thus the elements of the composition emblematically tell a holistic story of the subject’s life.

Mother and Daughter: Victoria and Alexandria portrays Victoria Vattimo, Communications Director and Albany Chief of Staff for Senator Maltese, with her daughter Alexandria. The portrait highlights the subject’s maternal role and the intimate relationship between mother and child. The artist did a second painting, Alexandria’s Fields, of which she wrote: “This lovely and colorful field of flowers was so enchanting, I felt it necessary to linger longer... so did Alexandria.”

The subject of To the Music Born: Councilwoman Melinda Katz is a singer as well as an attorney, a former New York State Assemblywoman, and a New York City Councilwoman since 2002. Her father, the late David Katz, founded the Queens Symphony Orchestra in 1953 and conducted it throughout his life. Her mother, the late Jeanne Dale Katz, founded the Queens Council on the Arts. Conceived independently, this graceful portrait fits well into the theme and format of the American Women Series.

In Indian Matron in Diaphanous Attire: Damyanti Ghandali, the artist portrays the subject in a decorative setting, using the golden yellows of her embroidered sari as a foil for the beauty and dignity of her figure. This work also reinforces the themes of the American Women Series, although not originally part of the series.

In recent years DelVecchio/Maltese has begun exploring nature and light in the landscape around her beloved family cottage, built by her father and her mother’s relatives near Albany, New York. In Foggy Day Trees she lets the white of the paper revealed between the pastel strokes represent emanating light. In Morning Lake she creates an almost synesthetic sense of waves lapping on the shore, while the image of the beached birchbark canoe conveys a sense of stillness and timelessness. She has also done charming genre paintings of her cats and dolls, like the arresting portrait of her cat Mushy, and the image of her favorite doll, Waiting for the Tea Party.

In preparatory sketches and finished studies the artist has continued to depict the figure with freedom, certainty and mastery. This is evident in her charcoal study of Senator Mary Lou Rath, and the pastel study Francois, done from a model at the Art Students League. Her narrative quintych Pat and Her Strays

(pp. 8-9) resembles a Chinese screen in the placement of forms near the picture plane against a blank background. It places the viewer in empathic connection with the subject and her love of animals. As Maria Cocchiarelli has pointed out, it also parallels artists like Pat Steir in her sequential works and Larry Rivers in his triptych, The History of Matzoh: The Story of the Jews. Art historian Norbert Lynton has written: “The variousness of twentieth-century portraiture answers a variousness within ourselves even as it satisfies a core and common desire to meet and know others... It is knowing others that gives life and purpose to knowing oneself.”3

The artist’s work has been shown in museums, galleries, expositions, exhibitions, and Italian-American Heritage presentations at the State Capitol, other states, New York City Hall, Queens Borough Hall, the Queens Museum, and Maspeth Town Hall. A list of her portrait commissions reads like a Who’s Who in the New York political and legal world, and includes Judge Dominick DiCarlo, Assembly Speaker Stanley Fink, Ambassador Charles Gargano, Assemblyman Anthony J. Genovesi, Senator Efraim Gonzalez, Judge Robert Hanophy, Judge Alfred Lerner, Consul General Franco Mistretta, The Honorable Susan Molinari, Mrs. Margaret Pataki, Senator Mary Lou Rath, and First Speaker of the New York City Council Peter F. Vallone. Former United States Representative and New York Mayoral candidate Mario Biaggi wrote to her on the publication of her book, An Artist’s Journey of Discovery: “Thank you for your incredible ‘Discovery’?a most extraordinary historical journey. Clearly it is the sum total of your remarkable artistic and research skills, truly a work of art.”4

A member of the Society of Illustrators, the Portrait Society of America, and the Art Students League, Constance DelVecchio/Maltese serves on the board of the Queens Theatre in the Park and the Queens Council on the Arts, which she has also served as President. Her many awards include an International Film Festival Award for her work for Johnson and Johnson; an Arts and Humanities award from Columbus Countdown: ‘92; an Artistic Excellence award from the Columbia Association; Woman of the Year awards from Italian Charities, and the Italian Businessmen’s Association; an Arts and Humanities award from the Sons of Italy Mario Lanza Lodge; Citations of Honor from Queens Borough President Claire Shulman, and from LaGuardia Community College; a Flame of History and Culture Award from the Central Queens Historical Association; a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Italian American Electorate; appointment to the Mayor’s Commission on the Status of Women by Mayor Giuliani; and a Governor’s Award for Excellence from Governor Pataki. These awards bespeak her community activism and the contributions she has made to New York’s cultural and Italian-American communities.

Constance DelVecchio/Maltese has earned her place as a significant figure and portrait artist. She invests her subjects with aspects of history painting (codified in the 18th century as the highest form of art) and of narrative, while keeping her primary emphasis on their visual qualities. She has persevered with determination and independence to chart her own course. The strength of character that she celebrates in her portraits is also evident in her life and art.





Notes

1. Quoted in Ronald G. Pisano, The Art Students League-Selections from the Permanent Collection, Heckscher Museum, Huntington, New York, 1987.
2. Artist’s website, http://www.cmaltese.homestead.com/AmericanWomen.html
3. Painting the Century: 101 Portrait Masterpieces, 1900-2000, exhibition catalogue, National Portrait Gallery, London, 2001.
4. Letter, Mario Biaggi to Constance DelVecchio Maltese, 2000, courtesy of the artist.