STEVEN CAVALLO
Steven Cavallo
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Steven Cavallo is a watercolourist whose work focuses on human rights, human trafficking and more specifically, forced sexual slaves of WWII known as Comfort Women and the systematic mass murder of Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators known as Holocaust.
Cavallo’s paintings consist of the human figure, most images being a combination of different models, put together in a way to show the underlying beauty of the human figure, and the grotesque images of what mankind has done. Cavallo uses the colors common to bruises in his work, and focus not on the war years, but his work concentrates on the years that follow. The years spent in silence, the years of speaking out and the years of being outcasts of society and now, in recent months, being forsaken by their own government.
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Education
School of Visual Arts - New York, NY 1975 - 1979
Solo Exhibitions
2018 Manzanar National Park "Looking Back Seeing Ahead” - Independence, CA
2016 Bergen PAC "Kintsugi" - Englewood NJ
2016 Gallery d’Arte "Darkness at the Break of Noon" - Chelsea, NYC
2015 Nabi Museum of the Arts "In Our Dreams We Fly" - Teaneck, NJ
2015 Bergen Performing Art Center “I & I” - Englewood, NJ
2014 Nabi Museum of the Arts “From Many Wounds We Bleed” - Teaneck, NJ
2014 Old Bethpage Public Library “Longing for the Light” - Bethpage NY
2013 Korean Press Center Gallery “Eulogies” - Palisades Park NJ
2012 Eunnam Museum “There But For Fortune” - Gwangj, South Korea
2011 Narah Gallery “Lamentations” - Fort Lee, NJ
2009 FGS Gallery “Playing Army” - Englewood, NJ
2008 Atrium Gallery “Never Forgotten, Never Mentioned” - Washington Township NJ
1992 Old Church Cultural Center “On the Road” - Demarest, NJ
1988 Andiamo Art Gallery “Golgotha” Palisades Park, NJ
Selected Group Exhibitions
2018 Space Ciel “One Eleven Parthibition” - Pompton Lakes, NJ
2018 Belskie Museum “In The Bleak Midwinter” - Closter, NJ
2015 Fullerton Museum "Forgotten Faces" - Fullerton, California
2015 Union City Museum “Remembering Comfort Women” - Union City, NJ
2015 Kupferberg Holocaust Museum “I Will Not Be Silent” - Queens, NY
2015 Belskie Museum “The Beauty of Watercolor” - Closter, NJ
2015 Seoul Museum of Art “World Watercolor Triennial” - Seoul, South Korea
2015 New Jersey Council of the Arts “Issues” - Rahway, NJ
2015 Alpha Gallery “Watercolor and Mixed Media Exhibition” - New Brunswick, NJ
2015 John Jay College of Criminal Justice “Of Human Bondage” - New York City, NY
2014 Catholic University of America "Sorrow & Hope” - Washington, DC
2014 Nabi Museum of the Arts “Laundromat” - Teaneck, NJ
2014 Riverside Gallery “I Came So Far For Beauty” - Hackensack, NJ
2014 Rutgers University Newark Campus "27 Kinds of Silence” - Newark, NJ
2012 George Mason University “Comfort Women: The Untold Story” - Fairfax, Virginia
2012 Gallery Western “Cry of the Halmonie” - Los Angeles, California
2012 Greisinger Museum “Tolkien Exhibit” - Jenins, Switzerland
2012 Gallery 1 & 9 "Come From the Shadows” - Ridgefield, NJ
2012 Kupferberg Holocaust Museum “Come From the Shadows” - Queens, NY
2011 Yegam Gallery “You Can’t Deny Reality” - Queens, NY
2010 Palisades Park Multimedia Center “Comfort Women” Memorial Dedication - Palisades Park, NJ
2010 Ansan Art Center Ansan International Art Fair - Ansan, South Korea
2010 Bergen Performing Arts Center “Childhood’s End” - Englewood, NJ
2008 Brennan Gallery “Immigration” - Jersey City, NJ
2008 Maxim Lounge “Four Strong Winds” - New York City, NY
2007 Korean Central Cultural Gallery “Between Memory and Reality” - Fort Lee, NJ
2007 Gallery Oms “Winter Invitational” - Fort Lee, NJ
2007 Sanmaroo Gallery “Five Corners” - Tenafly, NJ
2007 Atrium Gallery “Immigration” - Washington Township, NJ
2006 Jersey City Court House “Identity” - Jersey City, NJ
2001 Spoon Gallery “Summer Invitational” - New York City, NY
1988 Galaxy Gallery Group Exhibit - North Bergen, NJ
1986 Gallery of American Artists Group Show - New York City, NY
1981 Seraphim Gallery “Autumn Invitational” - Englewood, NJ
1979 Green Glass Gallery “Sports of the Future” - New York City, NY
1979 Alpine Gallery “Houses We Live In” - Closter, NJ
1979 School of Visual Arts Gallery - New York City, NY
Select Commercial Art Experience
1985 - 2001 Asimov Science Fiction Magazine - Interior Illustrations
1985 - 2001 Ellery Queen Magazine - Interior Illustrations
1985 - 2001 Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine - Interior Illustrations
1985 - 2001 Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine - Interior Illustrations
1987 - 1988 March of Dimes International
1990 - 1998 Simon & Schuster - Book Illustrations
1985 - 1988 Wall Street Journal - Pen and Ink Illustrations
1983 - 1985 Scholastic Magazine
1980 - 1992 Walker Books
1979 Hispanic World’s Fair "Subway Poster and Car Card"
1979 - 1981 Manor Books - Paperback Book Covers
Teaching and Judging
2015 - Present School Of Visual Arts, Figure Drawing and Watercolors
2005 - 2007 Tappan School of Art and Music
1989 - 1999 Parson’s School of Design, Guest Lecturer
2005 - 2007 Art & I, Cresskill, NJ
1999 - 2007 Sharon’s Art Center, Fairfield, NJ
1998 - 2011 Fort Lee Artist Guild (Lecturer and Demo)
2007 Pascack Artist Guild (Lecturer and Demo)
2006 Allendale Artist Guild(Lecturer and Demo)
1994 Ridgefield Artist Guild (Lecturer and Demo)
1989 - Present Palisades Park Multimedia Center
2001 - Present Bergen County Teen Arts Festival
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Artgist Statement
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In 2007 I began research of the issue of Comfort Women and spent time with these victims who were forced into sexual slavery during WWII. I have traveled both in Korea and the United States with these women, we have eaten together, protested together and spoke side by side at countless venues in their fight for justice and to have their testimonies be heard. I have learned from these victims the methods and effects of human trafficking in 1942 Asia.
Although still active in the Comfort Women cause, my newest paintings are focused on Human Trafficking today. The method of abduction has not changed much, since the days of 1942 that the comfort women speak of. The stigmas attached to the victims, the struggles to reenter society, the lies told, the lives destroyed, and how the families are effected.
The stories I portray in this series of watercolors are depicted as twisted bodies, often using the Biblical symbols of crucifixion, scavenger birds and thorns to portray sin, the ultimate humiliation and shame hoisted upon these victims. The color scheme that I tend to use are the colors of bruises, and the human forms are often from several models, not just one, but a cast of models molded into one figure, beautiful features twisted into what mankind has made.
My large watercolors are usually multi-panel installations using large sheets of watercolor paper, often pinned together roughly, not limited to square or rectangle boarders, but panels that break the boundaries of traditional paintings. There is nothing pretty about the figures at first sight, however, i strive to convey an underlying beauty to each human figure to portray who they once were, who they might have been and who they dreamed of being.
In a multi-panel piece entitled "There but for Fortune" (Inspired by a 1960s song by protest singer Phil Ochs) there are a series of watercolor portraits of battered faces on torn and burnt paper, mounted on burlap. "We have no place to rest our feet" comes from a quote by a former comfort women, but is still applicable today in these aging sex workers with no promise for the future, a series of contorted bodies floating in mid-air, not belonging anywhere but drifting through life. "Identity" shows a woman removing the mask of youth, beauty and servitude and revealing an aging Asian face. "From the Shadows" depicts scarecrow-like images, almost human, but falling short of being regarded as having human feelings and emotions. These paintings are a portrait of man's inhumanity toward man, of greed and destruction. They are paintings of beauty and horror and a crime that has not changed its face throughout the years.
In 2010 I had the honor of designing the first Comfort Women Memorial in the United States which is in Palisades Park NJ, as well as working with a team of Human Rights advocates in Glendale California in 2012 bringing awareness and support for the Glendale California Memorial that was unveiled one year later.
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