CPCS Celebrates Russo Painting Installation

By Jeffrey Mitchell

To celebrate the gift of an extraordinary painting by an extraordinary Boston artist, CPCS and the Africana Studies Department hosted a series of events on February 26. "Descent from the Tree #2," a 72" x 90" acrylic on canvas by the late Michael Russo, was donated to Africana Studies by Pearl Russo, the artist's widow. Its installation was followed by a ceremony in the Malcolm X Lounge (Wheatley Hall, 4th floor), followed by a reception and a panel discussion in the nearby CPCS Plaza.

"Descent from the Tree #2" is "one of a series reflecting on the horror of lynching," says CPCS Associate Dean Marie Kennedy, whose 40-year friendship with the Russo family led to their connection to the university. Kennedy and her colleagues "decided to have a panel discussion linked to the theme of the painting, following the installation ceremony and in observance of Black History Month." "Racism, Lynching, and the American Ideal" was the topic. As the Reporter went to press, plans called for Africana Studies Chair Robert Johnson, CPCS Professor Christopher Nteta, and Trotter Institute Director Regina Rodriguez-Mitchell to serve as panelists, and for CPCS Dean Ismael Ramírez-Soto to moderate the discussion.

The university has now acquired three Russo paintings. "Selma," which hangs in the CPCS Plaza, was donated to CPCS by the artist in 1997, shortly before his death. "Sagamore Series," donated by Courtney Cazden in Russo's memory, hangs in the chancellor's office. Pearl Russo has also established a scholarship fund for art students in memory of her husband.

Michael Russo was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1908. He studied sculpture at the Yale University School of Fine Arts for one year, then worked on his own. In 1932 he won First Honorable Mention in the Prix de Rome competition in sculpture for his monumental "Pietà."

Russo's career as an artist was interrupted when he became involved in the political and social struggles of the Great Depression. For the next twenty-five years, he was a full-time organizer in the Communist Party, opposing racism and fascism and advocating civil rights and justice while working particularly for unemployment insurance and the right of workers to organize industrial unions.
Russo resumed his artistic career in 1960, this time as a painter, while underground after being indicted under the Smith Act during the McCarthy era. Between 1968 and his death in 1998, he had sixteen one-man shows and was featured in twenty-four group exhibitions. His work is in the permanent collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the DeCordova Museum, the Milwaukee American Black Holocaust Museum, the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, and the Worcester Museum. Russo paintings are also in many private and corporate collections in the United States and abroad, including those of the university and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

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