Ugo Mochi

Ugo Mochi (pronounced mok̟ʰiː ; born March 11, 1889 in Florence , Italy ; † August 31, 1977 in New Rochelle , New York ) was an Italian-American painter , designer , illustrator , graphic artist and sculptor . He was best known for his paper silhouettes , which earned him the nickname "Poet of Shadows".

Life

Ugo Mochi was born in Florence as the fourth of seven children of Giuseppe and Georgina Mochi. His artistic talent was shown in early childhood. At the age of six he made miniature carts out of matchboxes and toothpicks, which were pulled by cardboard horses that he had drawn and cut out himself. When he was eight years old, he took lessons from a Florentine painter. At the age of ten he enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence , where he studied sculpture , anatomy and drawing until he was 15 .

In 1903 his father was killed and six months later in 1904 his mother died, which eventually led to the family separation. Mochi had to leave the academy and was accepted into a graphic school in Florence. His uncle later sent him to Bergamo near Milan, where he was supposed to learn a trade at the Institute for Graphics. Soon after, Mochi went to Milan, where he opened a drawing studio and earned enough with his art to take singing lessons.

In 1909 he moved to Germany, where he settled in Berlin. To earn a living he illustrated books, postcards and decorative materials. He often went to the Berlin Zoo and portrayed animals with his paper cuttings, but also sang in cafes and beer gardens. Soon, Mochi was part of the local artist community. With the support of his influential friends, he received a full scholarship to study sculpture at the Berlin University of the Arts . For two years he studied with the renowned animal sculptor August Gaul , whom he met while modeling in the zoo. He took another course with Paul Friedrich Meyerheim . In Berlin in 1912 he married his first wife June Skelton, a student of opera singing from the United States .

In 1919 Mochi returned to Italy, where he performed as a singer under the pseudonym Signore Fiorentino . At the same time, his silhouettes became increasingly popular, and in 1923 his first book L'ombra delle bestie was published . He also received orders from manufacturers such as Pirelli and Davide Campari-Milano , including 200 label images for the Campari liqueur. Through her many concerts, his wife had earned the reputation of a renowned singer of Bach, Handel and Mozart works.

During a concert tour in London in 1922, Mochi was invited to present his works in a large exhibition. It was the first to be devoted entirely to his outline art. It turned out to be a resounding success and led Mochi to give up his singing career and henceforth only worked as an artist. Queen Mary personally bought the work of art Ox Cart and Olive Tree in Tuscany .

In 1928 Mochi and his wife emigrated to the United States, where they settled in Yonkers . One of Mochi's first major projects in America was a silk mosaic commissioned and exhibited by the St. Regis Hotel in New York City in 1928 . Soon after, Mochi's first wife died. In August 1929 he married Edna S. Skelton, June Skelton's younger sister. From this marriage two daughters were born. He chose New Rochelle as his new residence.

In 1933 the work African Shadows appeared at the publishing house Literary Guild , which drew the scientific attention to the work of the artist. During the Great Depression , Mochi had success with commercial work and magazine illustration. He drew a leaping tiger for the Texaco company and made design drafts for enamelled table tops for the manufacturer Tepco - The Enamel Products Company.

Between 1941 and 1943, Mochi created the series Ladies of the White House for the World Book Encyclopedia . The portraits show every First Lady from Martha Washington to Eleanor Roosevelt in her dress during the inauguration against a contemporary White House backdrop . Mochi met Eleanor Roosevelt personally after the series was over.

In 1953 he illustrated the work Hoofed Mammals of the World by Thomas Donald Carter , the then curator for mammals at the American Museum of Natural History, with 200 pictures cut to scale. A second edition came out in 1971.

For the book Theodore Roosevelt's America: Selections from the Writings of the Oyster Bay Naturalist , published in 1955 by Farida Anna Wiley of the American Museum of Natural History , Mochi created vivid sectional images that illustrate the achievements of the US President and naturalist Theodore Roosevelt . For the work American Water & Game Birds (1956) by Austin Loomer Rand , then curator for birds at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Mochi combined the chapter headings with bird outlines.

In 1969 Mochi designed fourteen mosaic pictures for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The lighted images, which are eight feet (about 243 cm) high and two feet (about 61 cm) wide, were each cut from a piece of paper and depict a variety of scenes from nature, including dinosaurs , moose, and beavers Bears in Alaska , penguins , seals and skuas , the South American jungle , the North American desert, forest trees with an eagle, flowering trees, fish, shells and corals, nesting herons, giraffes in an African landscape, baboons in an African mountain landscape and koalas, one Lyss tail and kangaroos in Australia.

In the 1970s, in collaboration with Dorcas MacClintock, he published the books A Natural History of Giraffes (1973), which won the New York Academy of Sciences Book Award , and A Natural History of Zebras (1976). After Mochi's death, New Rochelle City Hall exhibited a 10-foot long mosaic picture entitled The Landing of the Huguenots in November 1977 . In 1980 and 1984 the books Horses As I See Them and African Images (both with text contributions by Dorcas MacClintock) with posthumously published illustrations by Mochi were published.

Mochi used the silhouette technique . He worked on a heavy glass surface and placed pieces of black paper on a thin sheet of white tracing paper with a contour on it. Then he cut out the picture with a pencil-shaped knife. He created pictures with thin, delicate lines, all from a single piece of black paper.

Mochi's work is exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution , the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia , the Cranbrook Art Museum in Michigan , in Museum für Naturkunde , Berlin, and exhibited in the Queen Mary Windsor Castle Collection in England .

Memberships

Mochi was an honorary member and past president of the New Rochelle Art Association , a member of the Association of Animal Artists (also second vice president), the New York Zoological Society, and the Audubon Artists, and an honorary member of the New Rochelle Music Teachers' Association.

literature

Mochi creates Fine Art from Dark Shadows. In: Dayton Daily News, (Dayton, Ohio), December 21, 1924, p. 69, accessed October 8, 2019 from newspapers.com
Adelaide Kerr: Animals, Plants, Horizons of the World brought to Life in Mochi Silhouettes. In: The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), March 8, 1953, p. 94, accessed October 8, 2019 from newspapers.com
Arts in silhouette. In: The Post Standard, Syracuse, New York, January 13, 1957, p. 17, accessed October 8, 2019 from newspapers.com
The Jacques Cattell Press (Ed.): Who's Who in American Art - A Biographical Directory. Xerox Education Companies, New York / London 1973, ISBN 0-8352-0611-4 , p. 517.
Alton Tobey: Ugo Mochi: Shadows in Outline. In: American Artist, June 1976, pp. 26–31, 67. (PDF)
Barbara Katrowitz: New Rochelle Art a Cut Above Norm. In: The New York Times , November 13, 1977.
Anne Commire: Something about the Author. Gale Research, Detroit, Michigan, 1985, Vol. 38, pp. 149-150.
Matthew Crowley: Sculpting with Cut Paper. In: The Post Star (Glens Fall, New York), June 22, 1995, pp. 33, 38; Retrieved October 8, 2019 from newspapers.com

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Mochi, Ugo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Italian-American painter, designer, illustrator, graphic artist and sculptor.
DATE OF BIRTH	March 11, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH	Florence , Italy
DATE OF DEATH	August 31, 1977
Place of death	New Rochelle , New York