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		Charles Arnoldi
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American painter, sculptor and printmaker /  born April 10, 1946 in Dayton, Ohio.

While visiting a girlfriend’s grandmother in New York, he took the opportunity to view works by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Observing their smudges, smears, and imperfections, he sensed that he too was capable of such work, and decided to attend art school. Arnoldi attended junior college in Ventura, California, where a professor convinced him to apply to the Art Center in Los Angeles. He was accepted with a scholarship, and enrolled in commercial illustration classes. It was the late 1960s, and Arnoldi recalls a stifling classroom environment where male students were required to wear ties. After only two weeks, he left and transferred to the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1968, where he remained for eight months before deciding to abandon his formal education and complete his training through his art practice. Arnoldi began using actual tree branches as a compositional element in his works, combined with painting to create stick constructions. These works did not endeavor to create illusions but rather inhabited physical space.

In the early 1970s, the artist attracted attention for his wall-relief wood sculptures, holding his first solo exhibition at the Riko Mizuno Gallery in Los Angeles in 1971. The following year he was included in Documenta V, Kassel, Germany, 1972. The use of wood has remained a feature of Arnoldi's oeuvre, although since the 1980s he has often employed it in combination with other media.  He played himself in the 2005 film, Sketches of Frank Gehry, directed by Sydney Pollack. Arnoldi lives and works in Los Angeles.

ACADEMIC

Attended Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles, 1968

AWARDS

"Young Talent Award” Los Angeles County Museum of Art Contemporary Arts Council, 1969
"Wittkowsky Award" Art Institute of Chicago, 1972
"Artist Fellowship" National Endowment for the Arts, 1974
John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 1975
"Maestro Fellowship" California Arts Council, 1982
"Artist Fellowship" National Endowment for the Arts, 1982

SOLO MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS

Charles Arnoldi: Wood, The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine University, Malibu, California (catalogue) 2008

Charles Arnoldi, Museum of Design Art and Architecture, Culver City, California 2006

Charles Arnoldi, Harmony of Line and Color, Busan Metropolitan Art Museum, Busan, Korea (catalogue) 2002

Charles Arnoldi, A Mid-Career Survey: 1970 - 1996, Fred Hoffman Fine Art, Santa Monica, California (catalogue) 1996

Arnoldi: Just Bronze, University Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach, California (catalogue) 1987

Arnoldi: Recent Paintings, University of Missouri-Kansas City Gallery of Art, Kansas City, Missouri (catalogue) 1986

Charles Arnoldi, A Survey: 1971-1986, Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (catalogue) 1986

Charles Arnoldi: Unique Prints, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California (catalogue) 1984
             

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

Driven to Abstraction: Southern California and the Non-Objective World, 1950-1980, Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, California, 2006

The First 80 Years, 1925-2005, Los Angeles Art Association/Gallery 825, Los Angeles, California (catalogue), 2005

Paint on Metal, Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona (catalogue), 2005

Lost But Found: Assemblage, Collage and Sculpture, 1920-2002, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California (catalogue), 2004

Celebrating Modern Art: The Anderson Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California (catalogue), 2000

Radical Past: Contemporary Art and Music in Pasadena, 1960-1974, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, California (catalogue), 1999

70s in 80s: Printmaking Now, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts (catalogue), 1986

The 38th Corcoran Biennial Exhibition of American Painting: Second Western States Exhibition, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (catalogue), 1983

1981 Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of Art, New York, New York (catalogue), 1981

Los Angeles Prints, 1883-1980, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California (catalogue), 1981

Painting and Sculpture Today, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana (catalogue), 1976 and 1978

Painting and Sculpture in California: The Modern Era, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California (catalogue); also shown at the National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C. 1976

Fifteen Los Angeles Artists, Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, California (catalogue), 1972

PUBLIC  COLLECTIONS

Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, South Carolina
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, California
Boise Art Museum, Boise, Idaho
The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii
Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado
Guggenheim Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain
Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, Missouri
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
Memphis Brooks Museum, Memphis, Tennessee
Menil Foundation, Houston, Texas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
Miami Art Museum, Miami, Florida
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
National Gallery of Art, Sydney, Australia
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
The Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada
The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey
The Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California
Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California
Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, California
Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon
San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, California
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
University Art Museum, California
State University, Long Beach, California
Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, California
Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey