Meet the Artist Ted DeGrazia
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Ted DeGrazia - the Man and His Art
His commercial success grew to include an international audience in the 1960s, beginning with UNICEF featuring his painting "Los Ninos" on their greeting cards. His vibrant images and bold strokes that most notably celebrate the Southwest and children have made him one of the most reproduced artists in the past five decades.
DeGrazia Bio
excerpts courtesy DeGrazia.org
The son of Italian immigrants, Ettore DeGrazia was born June 14, 1909, in the Morenci mining camp of Territorial Arizona. His early childhood experiences in the ethnically diverse community evolved into a lifelong appreciation of native cultures in the Sonoran Desert and a passion to create art depicting their lives and lore.DeGrazia continued creating his early paintings in Bisbee and by 1941, Raymond Carlson, editor of Arizona Highways, started publishing features about the artist. Then on a rare vacation to Mexico City in 1942, DeGrazia and his wife left an evening ballet performance and headed to the Palacio Municipal where muralist Diego Rivera was working. This chance encounter led to an internship with Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco, plus a solo exhibition of DeGrazia's paintings at the prestigious Palacio de Bellas Artes.
After returning to Tucson, DeGrazia found that no gallery was interested in exhibiting his artwork, so he bought an acre of land with $25 down at Prince Road and Campbell Avenue to build his first adobe studio in 1944, and also received a BA in Education from the UA. The following year he received a BFA, plus a Master of Arts titled "Art and Its Relation to Music in Music Education".
To protest inheritance taxes on works of art, DeGrazia hauled about 100 of his paintings on horseback into the Superstition Mountains near Phoenix and set them ablaze in 1976. This infamous event was reported in such publications as The Wall Street Journal and People magazine, becoming part of DeGrazia's legend before his death in 1982. By this time, the artist had established the DeGrazia Foundation to ensure the permanent preservation of his art and architecture for future generations.
** Part of "the DeGrazia legend" is a story that DeGrazia not only set on fire approximately $1.5 million in paintings, he also hid a number of other works in the Superstitions. To date, those paintings have never been found, but the legend lives on.
Birthday Wish Come True
I contacted DeGrazia weeks before my 13th birthday and asked if I could come visit him on my special day at his Gallery in the Sun. Not only did he agree to see me, we spent the entire day together after my parents agreed it was okay to leave me there. Talk about birthday wishes coming true! That's me in the pic with Ted & Marion DeGrazia, enjoying my cake after a crazy ride in a jeep with DeGrazia, from the new gallery to the old one on Campbell. While I don't remember the photographer's real name, I do remember him being referred to as "Col. Chuck" - just one more of the charming and colorful characters that were often around DeGrazia, wherever he went.
To top off a truly fabulous day, I went home with two very special gifts - a signed lithograph of El Burrito (one of my favorite DeGrazia paintings) and a necklace with a medallion of "Sunflower Girl". Sunflower Girl is now available in print, figurine and as part of the Children Series of collectible plates.
My birthday is after his, at the end of July, but the following June I returned with a home-baked cake, that featured my version of DeGrazia painting on the top of it.
Today, the Gallery in the Sun is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and hosts 50,000 annual visitors.
Find out more about Ted DeGrazia
- Arizona Highways Magazine
- Ettore "Ted" DeGrazia once said that for many years, he couldn't trade his paintings for a bottle of whiskey. But in 1976, when he rode into the Superstition Mountains with art valued at $1.5 million, the notion of a struggling artist went up in smoke - literally. There, DeGrazia burned 100 of his paintings to protest federal inheritance taxes. That's just one example of the artist's eccentric nature.
- Gallery in the Spotlight | Review | Tucson Weekly
- ...Nearby is the artist's grave. The man who could afford a mausoleum worthy of J.P. Morgan is buried as he wished, frontier-style, in a plain pine coffin covered by a mound of rocks so that his remains would be safe from marauding coyotes and scavenger birds. DeGrazia liked things like that. He talked that way. If museums wouldn't show his work, then he'd build his own museum. Like that ball park. He built it and the people came.
But with the death of his widow, Marion DeGrazia, at 97 this past December, the Gallery in the Sun is without a DeGrazia at the helm for the first time since its inception more than 50 years ago. - DeGrazia Foundation
- More info and galleries of Ted DeGrazia. Online ordering available for some of his most popular prints and reproductions. DeGrazia's Gallery in the Sun sponsors events throughout the year, including rotating exhibitions of original DeGrazia art, the annual fall opening of the Little Gallery to showcase visiting artists, and La Fiesta de Guadalupe every December.
DeGrazia Collectibles at AMAZON
DeGrazia Collectibles on Ebay
DeGrazia Books & Magazines on Ebay
DeGrazia Guestbook
Have you heard of Ted DeGrazia? Have any of his paintings, prints or books? Visited the Gallery in the Sun? Would love to hear your own stories too!
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Mandy K
Apr 9, 2012 @ 3:18 pm | delete
- How cool that you got to meet him in person.
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rauspitz Feb 20, 2012 @ 11:01 am | delete
- Wonderful lens about a fascinating artist.
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GayleMcLaughlin Sep 26, 2011 @ 8:09 am | delete
- What a tribute to your favorite artist! What a kind man!
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MiddleSister
Sep 11, 2011 @ 1:33 pm | delete
- What a wonderful treat to know this artist. Thanks for telling your story.
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Jerrad28
Jun 21, 2011 @ 3:59 pm | delete
- Very interesting, thanks!
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