Bench Lizards

Anthony Angarola

"Bench Lizards" is based on a painting Angarola did in 1922 while heading the Department of Drawing and Painting at the Minneapolis School of Art, 1922–25. This print was done in 1926 after Angarola returned to his native Chicago to teach at the Art Institute of Chicago, three years before his death at age 36.

The son of Italian immigrants, Angarola grew up in Chicago, Illinois. The social gathering place for the poor were the parks, which were public, and families would go to relax, read the paper, play chess, sew, let the children play and so on. In this image the police officer is engaged with the people rather than being a "guard". The painting of "Bench Lizards" was his first major success.

Anthony Angarola was born in Chicago, Illinois on February 4, 1893. He lost his mother at age seven and attended school through sixth grade, when he quit to help his father, doing odd jobs in his father's many real estate holdings spread about Chicago's North Side and the Loop. His frequent impulses to be an artist were disturbing to his classes from kindergarten on. Teachers sent home notes asking he be disciplined for disfiguring his assignment papers with wild drawings.

To escape his mundane existence, Angarola often found sanctuary in the Art Institute of Chicago. A guard suggested he look into the Art Institute's school of painting, which changed the course of his life. He began studying part-time in 1908, finally graduating in 1917.

Angarola taught as an art instructor at the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1921, the Minneapolis School of Art from 1922 to 1925, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1926 and the Kansas City Art Institute from 1926. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1928, a year before his death. He also participated in the Carnegie International exposition in 1928, exhibiting his painting entitled Proud.

In 1917 Angarola was married to Maria Ambrosius a concert pianist. They had two children together, Richard Anthony Angarola (a noted character actor) and Yvonne Daly (a classical pianist and composer), before divorcing.

Although he died at the young age of 36, he inspired many artists. Two of his noted students were William S. Schwartz and Belle Baranceanu, with whom he was engaged at the time of his death. His work is now in the permanent collection of several museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in Boston.

Anthony Angarola died in Chicago on August 17, 1929 at the Bradley Hotel as a result of injuries sustained in a car accident in France while on his Guggenheim.