Robert Borgatta

Roberto Eduardo Biagio Borgatta y Ruiz (1921–2009), known professionally as Robert Edward Borgatta, was an American artist and foremost a nature painter whose style evolved from abstractions and later became more representational.

Robert was born in Havana, Cuba and had a peripatetic childhood.

His father, Carlos Borgatta, worked for Marconi Communications as a communications engineer, designing and installing telegraph systems throughout Latin America (Cuba, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina).

Robert's father was of Northern Italian and Mexican Indian descent, fluent in both Spanish and Italian, and an Italian citizen.

He worked with David Sarnoff at Marconi Communications and Sarnoff would then later found RCA.

Prior to the outbreak of WWII when Italy became allied with Germany, Sarnoff offered Carlos a job at RCA and facilitated the visas for his immediate family to immigrate to the US from Italy.

Onorio Ruotolo of the Leonardo Da Vinci Art School in New York recognized Robert's talents as a child painter and accepted him as the youngest student in the school at nine years of age.

Robert traveled alone daily to the school via the elevated subway from Maspeth, Queens then back home nine hours later.

Carlos located the school through his acquaintance with Ruotolo, also from northern Italy.

The School emphasized traditional European art training with extensive time spent drawing life size plaster casts of classical Greco Roman sculptures and extensive instruction on human anatomy.

Robert was trained as Italian artists are trained as in the tradition of the Renaissance, where emphasis is first placed on drawing from classical Greek and Roman sculpture, before graduating to life model drawing and the study of perspective and then on to art history.

The School marked Robert's introduction to and lifelong admiration of Vesalius' anatomical drawings, and he would return to this reference book throughout his career, especially when he was sculpting.

At the school, Robert developed a friendship with the sculptor Isamu Noguchi and the two maintained contact for many years thereafter.

Noguchi had a long relationship with the School and like Robert, was a favorite of Ruotolo.

Also like Robert, Noguchi was obviously very different and stood apart from the other teachers and students: he was Japanese American and the oldest teacher at the time, Robert was the youngest student and still learning English.

Noguchi enabled "Robbie" to attend the life drawing classes where subjects were nude models.

(Robert's young age was the reason he wasn't allowed in these classes—the older students found his advanced skill level upsetting.).

Robert attended life modeling classes throughout his career and found the experience of life drawing an important resource that helped him resolve technical issues when developing new works.

Leonardo Da Vinci School, (1930 - 1938)

New York University School of Architecture and Allied Arts.

In 1931 at the age of eleven, Robert was a recipient of a Wannamaker Prize bestowed upon the best child artist in New York City.

The individual prizes were commemorative medals in the likeness of Rutherford B. Hayes the nineteenth President of the United States.

This was one of his most cherished possessions and he carried it with him as an army intelligence officer during World War II.

Bachelor of Fine Arts, magna cum laude, 1940

Robert received his bachelor's degree from New York University School of Architecture and Allied Arts graduating magna cum laude in 1940, and a Masters of Fine Arts from Yale University School of Fine Arts in 1942.

His masters thesis was on the Italian painter and sculptor Modigliani.

Robert was working on abstractions, portraits, cityscapes and representational works simultaneously during his years as a student at NYU and Yale.

Yale University School of Art, MFA, 1942

United States Army Rangers, Military Intelligence (1943-1946)

Robert had returned to New York a World War II veteran having spent three years overseas (1943–46), and prior to that having completed his MFA at Yale (1942).

His paintings in this period are mostly moody, dense urban landscapes and abstractions.

Upon his return, Robert received an important commission from the prizefighter Joe Louis to produce a mural for Joe Louis’ nightclub and restaurant in Harlem: a fifty by eight foot mural (400 sq. ft.) depicting black contributions to American culture.

Among the historic figures he portrayed were Booker T. Washington, Dr. George Washington Carver, Paul Robeson, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Marian Anderson.

In September 1945 as an officer in U.S. Army Intelligence, Master Sergeant Robert Borgatta (along with Corporal Nunzio Barbaro of Brooklyn and Lester J. McDonnell of Cleveland, Ohio) testified in the trial of Rita Louisa Zucca also known as “Axis Sally.” Zucca who had renounced her American citizenship in 1941 was broadcasting Nazi propaganda to U.S. troops in the Mediterranean.

The tribunal would sentence her to four years for conspiring with the enemy with the intent of demoralizing U.S. soldiers.

Robert was also featured again on the front page of the Times for a more light-hearted piece regarding his liberation of a small Italian village.

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a precursor to the CIA and Robert performed his duties through his Army Rangers attachment as an interrogator of Axis prisoners in Italy and North Africa.

His fluency in five languages: French, Spanish, Italian, German and English, along with charm and presence, made him an effective interrogator.

Despite these skills and his college degree, he refused officer commissions and stayed at the rank of Master Sergeant.

His first hand experiences at Monte Cassino changed him into a lifelong pacifist and an anti-war activist during the Viet Nam era.