Francesco Bologna, Artist, Was 89
Francesco Bologna, a respected artist, frame shop owner, mentor to young painters, and gallerist who showed many local artists, died on Aug. 16 at the Hamptons Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Southampton. He was 89.
Mr. Bologna’s representational paintings were of “anything that caught his eye,” his daughter Chucky Bologna of East Hampton said — trucks, gas pumps, old farm machinery. A large canvas depicting a car carrier with crushed cars was donated to East Hampton High School and still hangs in the school auditorium.
“I paint a lot of places people don’t want to look at,” he told The Star in a 1998 interview. His paintings reflect the classical aspects at work in those of painters he loved, such as Rubens and Tiepolo, as he told The Star, and balance realism with a painterly style. They often also contain surprising, contemporary elements such as an everyday kitchen item, or a bag with groceries. “Gas pumps and old buildings — they have personality,” he said.
With his wife, Barbara Bologna, a longtime East Hampton High School English teacher who died in 2001, Mr. Bologna spent summers in Venice and in Lucca, Italy, starting in the mid-1970s. He painted there, often beginning work that he would complete in his studio at home, and had several exhibitions of his work abroad, including in Milan.
His paintings are in a number of public and private collections, not least of which are those of the members of his large family.
Mr. Bologna had returned home to Corona, Queens, after serving in the United States Army in Italy during World War II, from 1945 to ’47, and had planned to go to Rome to study art under the G.I. Bill.
But his head was turned by the young Barbara Landi, who he saw outfitting a mannequin in the window of a dress shop. He stayed in New York instead and attended the Art Students League in Manhattan. The couple were married in 1951.
They lived in Queens with Mr. Bologna’s parents, and he worked at several jobs in New York City: running a sandwich shop, as an illustrator at a publishing house, and as a sign painter.
In 1962, he was sent out to Bridgehampton to make a sign for the Candy Kitchen luncheonette. He told his wife to take a ride out with their three children, and the family drove through a brand-new development in Springs, Clearwater Beach.
They “somehow finagled” the purchase of property there, said Chucky Bologna, and built a house, moving to Springs full time in 1963.
The family’s house was among only a handful in the area at the time. Mrs. Bologna was from a tight-knit Italian family, and her sister and her husband, Eva and Tom Verderosa, soon decided to build their own house nearby. In the interim, the two-bedroom Bologna house also became home to the Verderosas and their four kids, creating a lively household.
In 1974, when the Bolognas built a house on property off Montauk Highway in Amagansett, the Verderosa home base was set up there, too, bringing about a family compound.
After working odd jobs, including doing construction with the crew that built the original A&P (now Stop and Shop) building on East Hampton’s Newtown Lane, Mr. Bologna opened his own frame shop in 1966, down an alley off that street.
A decade later, he teamed up in the framing business with a brother-in-law, Joe Landi. The partners had shops on the Circle, Park Place, and Railroad Avenue in East Hampton, before buying property on Route 114 in East Hampton, where they opened the Bologna and Landi Gallery in 1982.
Through 1995, the gallery showed “everyone imaginable; it was a great success,” Chucky Bologna said. The gallery’s openings were festive, with “lots of food, plentiful wine, and opera playing,” she said. “Opera was a great love” of Mr. Bologna’s. He also loved reading, surfcasting, and clamming.
A gathering in his honor on Aug. 21 at the Bologna family house in Amagansett drew a crowd of some 60 people; all but three or four were members of his large extended family, with four generations represented and enjoying a feast, good wine, and each other’s company while remembering Mr. Bologna and celebrating his life.
An art show and more remembrances are planned for later this fall at Ashawagh Hall. An exhibit of the painter’s work will be open to the public on Nov. 5 and 6, and there will be a reception on Nov. 5 from 4 to 8 p.m.
A son of Philip Bologna and the former Concetta DeGaetano, Mr. Bologna was born in New York City on Jan. 26, 1927. He was the longest-lived and the youngest of five boys. He grew up in Corona, attending school there, and earned a high school G.E.D. degree.
His brothers painted, and he mimicked them, using their oil paints. Mr. Bologna, whose nickname, Inky, stemmed back to his days in Queens, loved to do life drawings, and he “went to as many sketch classes as he could,” his daughter said. His drawings illustrate a booklet about local ecology, “The Wetlands,” by Anthony S. Minardi. He also enjoyed doing studies in which he enlarged details of his own paintings, creating abstracted shapes and designs, his daughter said.
Mr. Bologna had lived in Key West, Fla., for a time some years ago, where his daughter Susan Bologna and his son, Peter Bologna, had moved to open Franco’s Deli, in his name, but he returned to Amagansett about five years ago.
His children, all of whom survive, live in Amagansett. Also surviving are four grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.