NEW YORK – Salmagundi non-resident artist-member Antonio Cirino (Italian and American, 1889-1983) was an important part of Salmagundi from 1926 to 1983, spanning 57 years. The gifted Rhode Island School of Design graduate was a prolific painter, jewelry designer, writer and teacher. The club is currently honoring Cirino with the exhibit Dazzle: Jewelry Drawings from the Antonio Cirino Collection, on view in its Print Gallery. The show opened on November 15 and runs through January 31, 2022.

Cirino is most remembered today as a painter of impressionistic landscape and coastal scenes, but the artist’s early career focused on teaching jewelry design. Cirino wrote a seminal book on the topic titled Jewelry Making and Design: an illustrated textbook for teachers, students of design, and craft workers in jewelry with Augustus Foster Rose (Canadian and American, 1873-1946) in 1917.

The book guides students through the techniques of jewelry construction using a series of progressively challenging exercises. Cirino asked students, friends and colleagues to create illustrations for his book and may have collected others. These works, in the artist’s private collection, are likely from former students during his 35 years of teaching in Rhode Island.

According to curator Bill Indursky, “Dazzle is a technically stunning look at a little-known side of a well-known artist. Cirino was prolific in multiple disciplines over his long life.”

About the Salmagundi Club

The Salmagundi Club is a non-profit 501(c)(3) professional and social club, created in 1871 by artists and patrons to support one another. It is one of America’s oldest arts organizations with more than 1,100 current members throughout the United States and abroad.

The club has continuously championed representational art from its founding with iconic members, including Thomas Moran, William Merritt Chase, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Emil Carlsen, N.C. Wyeth, Childe Hassam and Winston Churchill.

Visit the website of the Salmagundi Club.