Joseph Glasco (1925-1996)

A Brief Introduction

During his nearly five-decade career, Joseph Glasco (1925-1996) dedicated himself to making art. From the time he was a young boy in boarding school until his death, Glasco explored a wide variety of styles and materials. From surrealism and figuration to cubism, sculpture and pure abstraction, Glasco always pursued his own path and never followed, or was influenced by, what was the fashion of the time.

During his early years in New York, Alfonso Ossorio, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner and others were friends and influences. Later in his life, Glasco befriended younger artists such as Julian Schnabel and George Condo.

While Glasco lived through the important phases of American Modern and Contemporary art, he always enjoyed the freedom to pave his own way and left his own personal mark on 20th century American art history.

The Formative Years (1925-1949)

Joseph Glasco was born in Paul’s Valley, Oklahoma in 1925 and grew up in Tyler, Texas.  He was sent to boarding school in St. Louis where he pursued his interest in art and subsequently enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin. 

Glasco’s university education was cut short after he was drafted by the U.S. Army for service during World War II, and he became a decorated soldier from his service during the Battle of the Bulge.  While waiting for his orders to return to the U.S. after VE Day, Glasco was assigned to Portsmouth Art School in Portsmouth, U.K., to study art. This enabled him to visit London and its theaters and museums frequently.  Once Glasco’s military orders arrived, he returned to Texas to seek employment.

Glasco lived and worked in Dallas for a time and drafted advertisements for the Dreyfuss & Son Department Store.  Once he realized advertising wasn’t his life’s calling, Glasco moved to Los Angeles to continue his art studies. There he met and briefly studied with Rico Lebrun at the Jeppson Art Institute. He then later moved to the School of Painting and Sculpture in San Miguel d’Allende, Mexico to continue his art studies.

Early Success in New York City (1949-1960)

In 1949, Glasco arrived in New York City and attended the Art Students’ League where he studied with George Grosz.  He was one of the youngest artists to arrive on the New York art scene at that time.  As one of the most original young Americans, Glasco was soon recognized as a skilled draftsman and painter with a unique vision.

Shortly after Glasco arrived in New York City, he met Alfonso Ossorio, an artist and wealthy patron of the arts who introduced Glasco to his circle of artist friends including Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning, Jean Dubuffet, and Clyfford Still.

At the age of twenty-five, Glasco had his first one-man show at New York’s prestigious Perls Gallery. After his successful exhibition at Perls, Glasco became the youngest artist of his generation to be represented in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York when the museum acquired one of his drawings in 1949.  The Metroplitan Museum of Art also subsequently purchased one of Glasco’s 1949 drawings and his career as a New York artist was launched.  When Perls closed, Glasco moved to the Catherine Viviano Gallery, which also managed the estate of Max Beckmann and several other important European and American artists.  Glasco would remain with the Cartherine Viviano Gallery until the gallery closed in 1970.

Glasco often credited his conversations about painting with Jackson Pollock as critical to how he thought about his own art over the entire arc of his career.  But while Pollock had been a critical influence on Glasco during his nascent years in New York, Glasco’s early paintings stood apart from the Abstract Expressionist movement which was gaining momentum and attracting national and even international recognition.  Instead, as Abstract Expressionism was exploding around him, Glasco’s remained steadfast with work that was distinctly figurative, densely worked, and formal in style.   

While his conversations with Pollock remained important to Glasco throughout his lifetime, it was, in fact, Ossorio and Dubuffet and not Pollock who likely provided the early catalyst for change in Glasco’s work as it became more textural and abstract.

MOMA’s ‘Fifteen Americans’ Exhibition

Glasco’s early recognition in New York created many opportunities for the young artist. In addition to being invited to participate in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s annual exhibition in 1952, Glasco was also selected for one of The Americans exhibitions, a groundbreaking series organized by Dorothy Miller of The Museum of Modern Art.   Miller’s landmark exhibition titled Fifteen Americans, not only featured works by Glasco, but also the Abstract Expressionists of the period: William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still.   

Discovering His Artistic Voice (1962-1975)

Glasco left figurative work behind to explore large abstract paintings in the mid-seventies.  However, before this stylistic transformation in his art would evolve, Glasco’s restless spirit took him on many sojourns to various places in Europe including Greece and the Canary Islands, and later back to Mexico. 

While Glasco’s early work featured highly stylized representational forms, over the next 20 years, his work gradually shifted to a heavily patterned, geometric almost cubist approach to the figure.  

Glasco’s peripatetic nature and restless soul demanded he leave New York and travel widely in service to his unique vision.  After living and working in New York City with frequent stays at Ossorio’s well-known East Hampton estate, The Creeks, the artist followed Ossorio’s lead and spent considerable time in Taos, New Mexico with his partner, the author William Goyen.  There, he made the acquaintance of Frieda Lawrence (widow of D.H. Lawrence) who would be another pivotal influence on his life and work.  After her death and during an intense period creating sculpture in Taos, Glasco decamped again to the East Coast and England where he had made influential acquaintances among the London theater crowd. 

Glasco’s work continued to be exhibited by the Catherine Viviano Gallery and elsewhere across the U.S. while he moved from place to place.  After his extensive travels in Europe, by the early 1970s he found a large, New York-style 19th Century loft in Galveston, Texas which he made his permanent home base.   After 1975, Glasco spent time working primarily in Galveston with repeated and extended stays in Europe and New York. 

Glasco’s Late Paintings  (1975-1996)

Under the influence of Ossorio, Glasco first explored abstract collage in the early 1960s, but it wasn’t until the mid-1970s his paintings had become completely abstract.  He then began producing intensely colored, all-over abstract paintings of rhythmical, mosaic-styled canvas on canvas paintings in two stages.  He first covered the surface with a gestural layer of paint, and then applied and glued canvas pieces cut from painted canvases made expressly of random patterns for adding to the works in progress.

For Glasco, this approach to painting was appealing due to the hands-on nature of this approach he had come to enjoy.  He was particularly fascinated with the process of creating layers of paint and applied canvas creating an uneven, oftentimes rough surface texture.  Glasco was satisfied by the shadows, silhouettes and contours he produced as he broke the surface of the canvas with a cut patchwork of painted layers.

Glasco’s new and innovative approach to painting began to take precedence over his early use of paint on canvas.  As he advanced his own unique artistic approach to painting, he returned to New York and established a studio in Soho which allowed him to make more work and renewed his involvement in the New York art world.  This resulted in two exhibitions at Gimpel + Weitzenhoff Gallery on Madison Avenue in 1979 and 1983.  After his second one-person show at Gimpel, Glasco returned to work in his Galveston loft with frequent forays to New York.

In Galveston, Glasco became acquainted with Julian Schnabel, a young artist who graduated from the University of Houston, decamped to New York, and returned to Houston temporarily. Schnabel rented a loft adjacent to Glasco’s on The Strand, Galveston’s bustling main street.  While decades apart in age, Schnabel and Glasco recognized their artistic and intellectual kindred spirits and became fast friends.  Glasco often traveled with Schnabel and his family, discussed each other’s work, and advised on the installation of each other’s exhibitions.  It became an important relationship to both artists which continued until Glasco’s death. 

Over several decades, Glasco had many gallery exhibitions in Houston, including exhibitions with Meredith Long & Company.  The exhibitions attracted numerous Texas collectors to Glasco’s work.  After leaving Meredith Long, Glasco was represented by Betty Moody Gallery in Houston until his death in 1996.

Glasco’s reputation in Texas and beyond continued to grow when a major work by Glasco was selected as the signature object for Barbara Rose’s inaugural exhibition of Texas art at The Museum of Fine Arts Houston where she was then chief curator.  The exhibition drew even greater attention to Glasco’s works within the art community in Texas.  This interest culminated in a 1986 retrospective exhibition of Glasco’s work at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston organized by then curator (and subsequent director) Marti Mayo.  

After the 1986 retrospective, Joseph Glasco continued to work in his loft on The Strand and in the 19th Century Victorian house he purchased on Sealy Street in Galveston’s historic district.  Glasco was often visited by an array of locals, family members, and many out-of-town visitors such as Schnabel and the artist George Condo with whom he had become friends and remained close in his later years.  His visitors included friends from all over the world including museum professionals and gallery owners such as Leslie Waddington and Betty Moody, both of whom he would show with in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Glasco continued to travel, paint, and show his work. Notably, forty years after his work appeared in the 1952 Whitney Annual, his work was chosen for the 1991 Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in which, among others, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Joan Mitchell, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cy Twombly were also exhibited.

Several of Glasco’s late works were purchased by leading museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and other distinguished institutions. 

Troubled by health issues late in his life, Glasco continued his work producing a significant and distinguished body of innovative paintings in the 1990s. Joseph Glasco died of heart failure in Galveston on May 31, 1996.