Opening Reception & Gallery Talk: Portrait of an Artist - RICHARD PEPITONE Retrospective

Opening Reception and Artist Gallery Talk

Portait of an Artist 

RICHARD PEPITONE Retrospective

Curator: Bill Evaul

Exhibition Dates: January 19, 2024 - May 19, 2024

March 7th-Gallery Talk & Opening Reception

- Gallery Talk   4:00pm - 5:00pm

- Reception      5:00 pm - 6:30 pm

Free and open to the public. 

RSVP Appreciated

Richard Pepitone (1936-2022) overcame an exceptionally difficult childhood growing up in Brooklyn* to become one of Provincetown’s most prominent, versatile and collected artists. It is impossible to pigeonhole his artwork - Pepitone was a sculptor, a printmaker, painter, ceramicist and so much more.

Curator Bill Evaul explains, “Richard poured all of this resilience into making art. He rejoiced in discovery and experimentation. He would attack each new medium or method with the seriousness and focus of a laboratory scientist, noting what worked and what didn’t and always gleaning the best results. His fascination for art never waned. He excelled in whatever he tried, or maybe he somehow knew what to try to excel. He worked with plaster, polyester resin, bronze, glass, steel, wood, and found objects. He produced a significant body of ceramic artwork and dove headlong into works on paper, monotypes, collage, and relief and stencil printing.” Provincetown artist and longtime friend Salvatore Del Deo observed, he was “rather unique in the art world.… Pepitone was an artist to the very end of his fingers, to his heart. … He didn’t have to study ... or anything…. He had it already.”

Richard’s daughter, Michelle Pepitone, said that despite the hardships her father endured: “I have never met anyone who loved life as much as my father. He lived life on his own terms, up until his very last breath.”

The idea for this retrospective was born at Pepitone’s memorial service in 2022 as Michelle and Richard’s friends: artists Bill Evaul and Benton Jones, CCMoA Director of Art, discussed the possibility. “It’s inspiring to see this retrospective come to fruition with such a diverse showing of Richard’s work in one location. This would never have been possible without Michelle’s fastidious documentation and dedication to her father and his artwork,” says Jones.

Portrait of an Artist displays over 80 Richard Pepitone artworks including sculptures made from bronze, polyester resin, glass, birchbark, copper, and ceramic; glass vessels, stained glass panels and glass jewelry; prints, monoprints, paintings, graphite drawings, paper collage and mixed media; and ceramics plates and vessels. 

Pepitone’s works in the exhibition come from 28 sources including CCMoA’s Permanent Collection, Provincetown Art Association & Museum (PAAM), Michelle Pepitone and 25 independent collectors. “Having my father’s artwork is in so many places with so many wonderful people keeps his legacy and memory alive. I am grateful that I have stayed in contact with many of his friends and colleagues who have now become my friends too.”

*A limited number of Richard Pepitone’s 2017 memoir, Gone For The Day, A Childhood Memoir will be available to purchase in the CCMoA Museum Shop. 100% of the sales of the first 100 copies of the memoir will go directly to the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown.