John Spike

John Thomas Spike ( born November 8, 1951 in New York City ) is an American art historian, critic and consultant who has specialized in the Italian Renaissance and Baroque painting.

Biography

John Spike grew up in New York City and Tenafly, New Jersey. His father, Robert Spike, was a participant in the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1960s, and his brother Paul Spike, an author and the first American editor of the satirical British magazine Punch. After completing his undergraduate studies at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, he has made a doctor 's degree in Art History at Harvard University. He did his PhD on the Italian painter Mattia Preti, an important representative of the Caravaggio school. It was the first complete study of Preti. Spike was later honored for his work with the honorary citizenship of Taverna, the Italian birthplace Preti.

Throughout his career, Spike has organized art exhibitions in several museums and lectures. Examples are the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna; the Galleria degli Uffizi ( Uffizi ) and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence; the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth; the Pierpont Morgan Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Musée du Louvre, Paris; the State Gallery of Stuttgart; the National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. He has also held lectures at Harvard, Yale and Princeton universities, as well as at the University of Malta.

Spike has also written books on Italian artists such as Fra Angelico, Masaccio and Caravaggio. Currently he is working on a novel about the life of Michelangelo.

Spike has also written many books and articles on contemporary artist in New York and Italy. In addition, he was a member of the jury for the first Biennale Internazionale Dell'Arte Contemporanea, Florence, Italy, in December 1997. From 1998 to 2005 he was director four times this exhibition. He was also the sole judge of the 2005 Turku biennials, Finland, where it is organized in 2011 in connection with Turkus designation as European Capital of Culture this year, a sculpture exhibition. At the moment he edited the catalog raisonne by Richard Anuszkiewicz, an American artist of the Op Art movement.

Spike lives with his wife and son in Florence.

Bibliography (selection)

  • Dissimilar Revelations. Essays on Neolithic type, Fra Angelico, Velázquez, Goya and Cézanne, Edgewise, New York, 2003
  • Gregorio Preti, Paintings and Documents, Centro Di, Florence, 2003
  • Il Senso del Piacere. Una collezione di nature morte, Skira, Milano, 2002
  • Caravaggio, Abbeville Press, New York, 2001
  • Mattia Preti. Catalogue raisonné of the paintings / Catalogo dei ragionato dipinti, Centro Di, Florence 1999
  • Mattia Preti e l' Ordine di San Giovanni e tra la Calabria Malta, catalog Museo Civico, Rende, 26 March - 12 June 1999
  • Masaccio. Fabbri Editori, 1995
  • Fra Angelico, Fabbri Editori, 1996 ( Ger. edition 1997: Hirmer Verlag, Munich)
  • Italian Paintings in the Cincinnati Art Museum, catalog, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1993
  • Angel Orensanz Disegni: 1991-2000, catalog, Galleria d' Arte Contemporanea di Palazzo Ducale, Pavullo
  • Rossano Naldi (1913-1994), catalog, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, 1998
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