KENT, CONN.—America is looking back at its own origin story this year, bringing to vivid life its revolutionary heritage. A little gallery tucked away in Kent Green is contributing to this effort with an exhibition of paintings by the late Cornwall artist Charles Besozzi, a man who began painting late in life, filling his canvases with bold images of American history.
The exhibit at the So Lost Sew Found Gallery, 23 Kent Green Blvd., is titled “Visions of America’s History, An Exhibit Commemorating Our Semiquincentennial” and features 20 of Besozzi’s works. Subjects range from Thomas Hooker’s emigration to Connecticut, to the reading of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, Lafayette at Valley Forge and the Canada campaign.
The gallery, an arts and crafts shop that specializes in antique reproduction prints, folk and outsider art, is owned by Besozzi’s granddaughter, Elysia Magazzi. She has long made it her mission to share her grandfather’s art with the public as a means of educating people about history.
“I’ve been sharing his works since 2011,” said Magazzi. “I want to share it for educational purposes, and I’ve had a number of exhibits in town halls and libraries.” Currently two of the American Revolution paintings are part of the Cornwall Historical Society’s 250th exhibit and another one is on display in the Kent Town Hall.
Like many self-taught artists, Besozzi’s style lacked the perspective and form seen in the work of academically trained artists. But his gift for storytelling and his bold colors give his works a vigor and immediacy that more technical works might lack. “His perspective was all over the place,” Magazzi said. “That is what makes it so interesting.”
Besozzi, born in Torrington in 1904, was the son of Italian immigrants. He graduated from the Torrington High School in 1923 and was a resident of Torrington until the mid-1940s. During World War II he worked at Warren McArthur Corp in Bantam, where he met his future wife, Mabel Locke, of Cornwall. The couple married in the 1940s and moved to Cornwall where they raised three children.
Besozzi worked in the construction trades, but in his 50s he suddenly picked up a paint brush, often depicting the homely details of everyday life in his works. “He kind of was cut from the same cloth as Grandma Moses,” said his granddaughter. “I think of it as outsider art.”
Many of Besozzi’s colorful paintings were done on wide, horizontal Masonite boards, a format allowed him to expand upon an event, to place it within a larger landscape or village scene and to include as many details as possible.
In the 1970s, he was inspired by the Bicentennial and began painting scenes out of American history. Magazzi said he had an encyclopedia and would read about his subjects and then translate the information into paintings.
With the exception of a few paintings, the majority of works in the exhibit were painted in the 1970s and 1980s, when the artist was in his 70s and 80s. He continued to paint until his death in 1997, at the age of 92.
Magazzi lived with her grandparents until she was 17 and recalls spending hours in her grandfather’s studio space watching paintings take shape. He was very sincere, sweet and straightforward, she recalled. “He wanted people to be drawn to his art and to learn from it.”
The gallery is open Friday and Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m., Sunday, 1 to 3 p.m. and by appointment; call or text 860-960-3563. There will be a reception for the show Sunday, July 12, from 1 to 4 p.m. It will remain on view through mid-October.
