Alberto Morrocco

Alberto Morrocco OBE FRSA FRSE RSW RP RGI LLD (December 14, 1917 - March 10, 1998) was a Scottish artist and teacher. He is famous for his landscapes in Scotland and abroad, still-life, figure painting and interiors, but perhaps his best known works are his beach scenes and views of Venice.

Life and Work

Morrocco was born in Aberdeen in 1917, the son of immigrant Italians. He studied at Gray's School of Art from 1932-38 and in France, Italy and Switzerland. He is famous for his landscapes in Scotland and abroad, still life, figure painting and interiors but perhaps his best known works are his beach scenes and views of Venice.

The avant-garde of the twenties and thirties, in particular Braque and Picasso, had an immense influence on him for the rest of his life. The outbreak of the Second World War saw him detained in Edinburgh Castle, as an enemy alien, but he was released and allowed to serve as a conscientious objector in the Royal Army Medical Corps. After the war Morrocco had a brief spell teaching evening classes, and then spent the rest of his professional life in Dundee, as Head of the School of Painting at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art (now part of the University of Dundee) from 1950.

Morrocco was prodigiously productive. He had a spectacular retirement, producing some of his most vigorous work in the period from 1982 to his death. Even late in his life and seriously ill, he would commit himself to exhibitions of thirty or forty new works in a year.

Morrocco died in Dundee in 1998.

Popular Culture

One of Jose Vanders's songs, an English singer, is entitled Alberto Morrocco:

"Alberto Morrocco is a painterHis thoughts are on my walkHe likes to draw this ladyAs she sleeps

Alberto Morrocco paints bluebirdsBut he colors them greenHe draws a jar of rosesAs the lady, she still sleeps

And I don't knowIf he loves her sweetlyI just hope he tells herIf he does

Alberto Morrocco is a painterSmudges the walls in pinkShutters hang like baublesAs the lady, she still sleeps

The porcelain sinks got a crack 'n't (in it)And the birdcage has got no birdHis trousers billow in the windowAs the lady, she still sleeps

And I don't knowIf he loves her sweetlyI just hope he tells herIf he does

Alberto Morrocco is a painterAlberto Morrocco loves this lady,So he paints her"

Awards

The University of Dundee awarded Morrocco an honorary doctorate in 1980. He painted all its Principals and, in 1977, the Queen Mother as Chancellor. He was awarded the San Vita Romano Prize and both the Guthrie and Carnegie Award of the Royal Scottish Academy, where he was elected Fellow in 1962. In addition to the degree from Dundee University, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Stirling University in 1987. He served on the Scottish Arts Council and the Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland and was appointed OBE in 1993.

Morrocco was a member of the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts (RGI) and the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour (RSW).

External links

* [http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/fellowship/obits/obits_alpha/morrocco_alberto.pdf Detailed article by Alan Kennedy]