DECIPHERING TOM DISALVO: A FIRST-GENERATION ARTIST BETWEEN SICILY AND SOUTH FLORIDA

This dissertation aims to contextualize the self-taught Sicilian born artist, Tom DiSalvo (1947-2011) among contemporary artists of Italian extraction. It investigates a selection of his corpus of over 300 works of art spanning four decades as an integral contribution to Italian diasporic scholarship. The primarily large-scale paintings, enhanced with underlying textual layers and semiotic translations of famous works of art, reveal distinct ties to American, Italian and hybrid patterns of ethnicity. Much of his work remains unknown in scholarly and public circles, due in part to the limited canon of Italian diasporic visual art (with the exception of film) and to DiSalvo’s own disapproval of the commodification of his art. The project originated with the classification of the artist’s personal artifacts and the interpretation of his canvases displayed in both public and private spaces. The methodology employed in this dissertation is as unique and multifaceted as its topic. I depart from paintings to reveal the man behind the canvas, thanks to the voices and memories of friends and family on both sides of the ocean, anchoring my findings to the foundation of scholarly discussions, and theoretical and critical sources in the disciplines of hybrid cultural studies, Italian and Italian American art and literature, as well as outsider art to verify the intersections between DiSalvo and members of each of these communities.