Exhibitions
Imaging the Unseen: Roman Joseph Verostko (1929-2024) / Fall 2024
We think things out and our logic fails us; we have marvelous feelings and emotional leaps; we follow them and they too leave us incomplete. My paintings are spontaneous emotion; they are also calculated precision; they search to resolve oppositions in a visual dialogue; they are born from the belief that we are growing to a great love that will resolve the ambiguous and deliver us to Peace.
- Roman J. Verostko, December 21, 1964
- Roman J. Verostko, December 21, 1964
After working as an artist for over seventy-five years, Roman Joseph Verostko, C’55, S’59, H’21, died at his home on June 1, 2024, having left an indelible impact on generations of digital creatives working around the world. Verostko was formerly a Benedictine monk at Saint Vincent Archabbey and a professionally trained painter and scholar before he began experimenting with electronic media, circuit logic, and computer languages. Working at a time when art made in tandem with computers was viewed with deep suspicion, Verostko anticipated the ways in which algorithms would revolutionize global society. Despite staunch resistance from those who maintained computer-assisted drawing would never be considered art, Verostko remained resolute in revealing a universe of visual forms that do not “re-present” the world as previous generations has sought to do but rather make visible the invisible.
The Verostko Center is proud to mount this memorial exhibition surveying the extensive career of our namesake.
The Verostko Center is proud to mount this memorial exhibition surveying the extensive career of our namesake.
Above: Roman Verostko, American, 1929-2024, Eikon 203, 1971, acrylic on panel, 24 x 24 inches, Alice Wagstaff & Roman Verostko Legacy Collections. Saint Vincent College, Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
Fiat Lux: Christian Painting from the Estate of Frank Mason / 08/30 - 10/11
Motivated deeply by his faith and mastery of classical painting, Frank Mason (1921–2009) created dozens of works imaging Biblical subjects and scenes from the lives of the saints over the course of his prolific career. An Instructor of Fine Arts at the Art Students League of New York for fifty-seven years, Mason educated generations of artists in the technical approaches to painting employed since the Renaissance. It was Mason’s use of light that links his work to the artists he most admired. It serves as a theological throughline that infuses his canvases with an awareness of divine fulfillment.
Loaned from the artist’s estate and Pittsburgh's Tomayko Foundation, Fiat Lux features over two dozen paintings and preliminary studies in the first exhibition centered on the artist’s treatment of Christian themes since his death in 2009.
Loaned from the artist’s estate and Pittsburgh's Tomayko Foundation, Fiat Lux features over two dozen paintings and preliminary studies in the first exhibition centered on the artist’s treatment of Christian themes since his death in 2009.
Above: Frank Mason, American, 1921-2009, Christ with Artist as St. Thomas, Oil on Canvas, 16 x 22 inches, c. 1995, Estate of Frank Mason.
l'art pour un nouvelle ére / 2024
This selection of works from the Michael and Aimee Rusinko Kakos Collection is comprised of paintings by French artists who, inspired by Impressionism’s core circle, elaborated upon the practices of their predecessors during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It also includes the work of subsequent generations who continued to create art reflective of the modern era. Gifted to Saint Vincent College in 2022, the Rusinko Kakos Collection points to an intergenerational, transnational network of artists who built upon the learnings of Impressionism but who have largely been omitted from art historical surveys. Mounted 150 years after the public debut of Impressionism, this display foregrounds the work of artists who engaged the same themes, subjects, and methods of working as their more famous forerunners.
Above: Suzanne Valadon, French, 1865 – 1938, Bouquet of Roses in a Shell (Bouquet de Roses dans un Obus), ca. 1919, Oil on card, 12 x 9 ½ inches, Saint Vincent Art & Heritage Collections, Gift of Michael and Aimee Rusinko Kakos.
