About this Work
About the Artist
American
b. 1917 Placerville, California
d. 2002 Burlingame, CaliforniaBorn into an Italian-American family in Placerville, California, Oliver Gagliani lived most of his eighty-five years in South San Francisco. From grade school through college, music was his passion. In 1940, he enrolled in San Francisco State University to major in music with a concentration in conducting. However, after suffering a significant hearing loss during his service in WWII, his plans for a career in music ended. By chance, he saw photographs by Paul Strand at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1946. At that moment, he realized that a career in the arts was possible with photography. Gagliani believed that both photography and music share the principles of tones, harmonies, and rhythms. Largely self-taught, Gagliani’s only formal training in photography was seven weeks of study in 1946 with Ansel Adams and Minor White at the California School of Fine Arts (now the Art Institute of San Francisco). He had his first solo exhibition in 1954 at the Peninsula Art Association in San Mateo, California, which was followed by many others, including exhibitions at the George Eastman House, San Francisco Museum of Art, and the Witkin Gallery. Over the years, he taught workshops and had a large group of devoted students. He was a founding member of the Visual Dialogue Foundation in San Francisco in 1969. With a Fischer Grant from the University of Arizona in 1974, Gagliani traveled to Italy and returned there annually for 20 years, producing over 20,000 images.
b. 1917 Placerville, California
d. 2002 Burlingame, CaliforniaBorn into an Italian-American family in Placerville, California, Oliver Gagliani lived most of his eighty-five years in South San Francisco. From grade school through college, music was his passion. In 1940, he enrolled in San Francisco State University to major in music with a concentration in conducting. However, after suffering a significant hearing loss during his service in WWII, his plans for a career in music ended. By chance, he saw photographs by Paul Strand at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1946. At that moment, he realized that a career in the arts was possible with photography. Gagliani believed that both photography and music share the principles of tones, harmonies, and rhythms. Largely self-taught, Gagliani’s only formal training in photography was seven weeks of study in 1946 with Ansel Adams and Minor White at the California School of Fine Arts (now the Art Institute of San Francisco). He had his first solo exhibition in 1954 at the Peninsula Art Association in San Mateo, California, which was followed by many others, including exhibitions at the George Eastman House, San Francisco Museum of Art, and the Witkin Gallery. Over the years, he taught workshops and had a large group of devoted students. He was a founding member of the Visual Dialogue Foundation in San Francisco in 1969. With a Fischer Grant from the University of Arizona in 1974, Gagliani traveled to Italy and returned there annually for 20 years, producing over 20,000 images.
