Below is the first of a three part interview conducted with Bruno Surdo, director of the School of Representational Art, in January of this year. We covered Bruno’s background, his experiences at Chicago’s American Academy of Art, studying under Fred Berger, studying at Atelier Lack, and the founding and history of SORA. The purpose of posting the interview is to provide a window into SORA’s 16 year history, what the school is like, and contemporary realism. Enjoy. –Ben Rathbone

BR: Tell us about your background. How did you know you wanted to become and artist?
Bruno: Like so many children, I had a fascination with comic books. I liked religious art because I was brought up in a religious environment. So I liked the fact that pictures were used to tell stories and I gravitated towards that early on. I also lived in an Italian American family that always stressed great artists of the past. So if you were doing something, they would say “you accomplished that like a Michelangelo or a Leonardo,” so these were names I was familiar with very early on. I was fortunate to travel to Europe and see some great art as a youngster. I was the first artist of my family, and it was definitely an interest I had, probably when I was 8 or 9 years old.

BR: Did you go to high school in the U.S.?
Bruno: I went to a regular public school. My father passed away when I was young. In my sophomore year, my mother decided to take my sister and I to Italy and live there for a year. So I did attend one year of high school in Italy. The school was called Liceo Artistico. In Italy, you have to declare you major in high school, so I went to an art school. I drew plaster casts, and did drawings of students and still lives, did a lot of mechanical drawing, all in the Italian language. So it was fundamentally sound and I was there for about a year. I came back and finished at my regular high school. I was the first American ever allowed into that school.

BR: Did you go to the American Academy of Art, in Chicago, right after high school?
Bruno: Yes, once I graduated high school I wanted to pursue art. It was between sports and art. I decided I liked art more, even though I loved sports. I was fortunate to meet some people in high school that gave me advice on how to get a job in the art world. One piece of advice was to be a commercial artist. My goal was to go to art school and get a job as a commercial artist, not knowing exactly what a commercial artist was. So I looked up schools and universities and applied at several. The American Academy seemed to be a good fit. It was local and had a history of great art and accomplished artists and commercial artists, so I enrolled there and studied mainly graphic design. I stayed away from the painting classes. My first year I took a lot of fundamental and beginner courses. When I knew my major, at least back then it was an associate degree, I wanted to pursue graphic design instead of illustration. The advice teachers gave was that the illustration program was pretty weak and the painting department was very weak, so I should pursue graphic design. Plus graphic design is a great field. I also gravitated towards design. However, I knew once I started drawing the human form that that what I wanted as my main focus. And that was my best work, so no question, I accelerated really quickly.

Once I entered the life drawing room, my life completely changed. I knew right away that I had a passion for drawing the human form. Having grown up in a household of Italians and hearing people swearing and passionate, I knew drama and passion. I had two brothers who were bodybuilders, so I had familiarity with the human body and I would draw all these superheroes and muscle dudes, so I loved the body. In Italy, we would draw the other students with clothes on, because it was high school, but never the nude body. However, I used to draw muscular people out of my head, coming from an interest in comics. So like many of the young people today, I just liked stories told through the human body. I was very fortunate to have some great teachers. Richard Halstead was my first life drawing teacher. He saw my dedication and interest and manner and tried to guide me, but even at some level he felt I should not be with him. He advised me to study with a more advanced figurative artist named Fred Berger. And once I met Fred and saw Fred’s work on display at the school, my life changed again because I saw drawings that were similar to what I admired in books. I definitely enrolled in his class. As I got to know Fred and talk to him as an artist and teacher, he advised me on how to proceed to be a more serious figurative painter. One thing he advised me to do was to leave the American Academy and study at a serious traditional art school or find the most talented artist in the country and be his or her apprentice because that was how artists in the past were trained. This was a big task as there were no schools of that nature that I knew of until I was introduced to the Atelier Lack in Minneapolis, which was a school devoted to the tradition of 19th century academic art. Mike Chelich, a colleague of mine at the American Academy, introduced Fred to it, and that’s how it all started. Mike and I were classmates, in different classes, but had an association with Fred. Fred was kind of like our link to each other in my second year.

BR: When was all of this?
Bruno: I completed 2.5 years at the American Academy between 1981 and 1983. I studied with Fred for a year and a summer. Just a little note about Fred, I studied in his class, and was excited to work with him, but I really did not get to know him at all in the first class I took with him. He was swamped with so many students who were demanding his time. I barely got critiques or talked to him the first semester I studied with him even though he knew who I was and knew my seriousness. He was so preoccupied with other students. Then I took a summer course with him and there was only 5 or 6 students and that’s when we really had time to talk and get to know each other. And that was the turning point in my education because he took me under his wing and basically became my mentor, directed me, and gave me the confidence to pursue this career. I think, and this applies to young people today, you realize that you need encouragement, especially in this demanding art field. And Fred just gave me all the confidence that I could do it, because he saw that I was serious. But he told me you have to have a good head on your shoulders and you have to know what to do and how to do it. He gave me advice on how to proceed in my education and also how to organize my life to be able to do this financially. So he was a practical man but also a very dear friend that really cared for his students and I’m very grateful for having known him.

BR: For how long did Mr. Berger teach at the American Academy?
Bruno: I don’t know how many years, maybe twelve. He taught at the Chicago Academy, Columbia College, Noyes Cultural Center which is part of the Figurative Art League. He just had a respectful nature, and people just connected with him because he was such a giving man. He definitely taught some great artists who went on to produce some profound imagery. So he influenced a lot of people because he cared for them and he guided them, and that was wonderful. As a man he was so committed to teaching, and he was very thorough, and pretty much a black and white guy. He knew if you were talking outside of your mouth he would challenge you, so he made sure your art had some conviction and some purpose. So if your art was shallow or superficial, he would challenge you on it and make you think it through. So it was kind of like a graduate program where he was constantly forcing us to use our mind and not get sucked in to the superficiality of making art. But he was well respected in his life, and I think people admired him for his art, which is very profound and really well done, and the way that he used modern and figurative painting, or modern art with figurative art he was innovative in his own right. He was highly influenced from so many different art forms from all different cultures that he would just encapsulate them in his work, and he was a very worldly man in a very small body. But he lived the simple life but produced some major works.

BR: Are there any particularly notable paintings by Mr. Berger?
Bruno: Well there is one in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, “A flower, a child, will they grow….?” probably one of his better pieces. It’s a drawing, not a painting. He did not do many paintings. Another is called “He is one of us” which is very profound painting of loss and grief over a loved one, and all that goes into losing somebody. So he looked at life in a very, maybe negative manner, but definitely had a point of view that was very worldly and personal. Growing up in the wartime years I think he saw devastation and destruction so he was a bit cynical at times about the world and its future, so he thought art can serve as a vehicle to help our culture see these monstrosities. So he was definitely part of the era in the 40s and 50s when people were a little scared, and didn’t know if their life was going to continue after next week, or if some nuclear bombs or wars were coming.

BR: When you were studying with Fred Berger in the early eighties, what were the attitudes at the time towards representational art?
Bruno: It’s interesting because Fred was an artist in Chicago since the 1940s and there were no opportunities for realistic painters who wanted to work in a traditional manner. There was the Art Institute of Chicago which had a history traditional painting as a part of their system, but then they got rid of it. It was hard to find it in anything other than small pockets, let alone a school that was geared towards it. Fred told me that in order to really study in this tradition you are going to have to search it out because it is rare. Once we saw this little catalog that Mike brought in from his contacts in Indiana, we were quite surprised that a school like this even existed because it was so unheard of. The American Academy had courses on how to draw from life, but the idea of a whole school modeled modeled after the Ateliers in France was amazing. I had never heard of it. Fred was far more knowledgeable of history and advised me that there had to be something like this out there, you just have to find it. Sure enough, once he saw the work and he saw this type of school, he asked Mike and I to go check it out. Which we did.

We went to Minneapolis for a visit and met Richard Lack and saw his school. Mike and I were excited because this was exactly what we were looking for. We didn’t really endorse the whole movement of Classical Realism, we were just interested in the fact that there was this intense training that you could not find anywhere. I was a year older than Mike, so I was the first student to go up to Minneapolis. Mr. Lack’s school was actually full, so he did not accept me the first year, as he did not have an opening. So he recommended me to Jim Prohl, who had a school very similar in Minneapolis. So I went there for a year. It was probably a little more intense than Mr. Lack’s because it was smaller. I got a lot of hands-on direction from Jim on how to do casts and work from the live model. So it was an identical program, but I had my eye on going to Mr. Lack’s school after that, so I kept pursuing Mr. Lack. He finally accepted me the second year I was there. I was grateful that I met Jim. Jim was a great guy. He helped me a lot in the beginning with the fundamentals, even though it was a very depressing environment. It was an old warehouse building with an old make-shift elevator and was not the most motivational environment you could be in. But it forced me to be focused and I learned a lot.

BR: How many students were at Mr. Prohl’s school and was he the only instructor?
Bruno: There were about 12 and yes, he was the only instructor. We pushed him. Jim was a nice man, and he just liked that I was there with a friend of mine, Chris Sasser, who as also accepted to Atelier Prohl. We had a good time. It was probably the most enjoyable time I had while I was up there. We joked around a lot and had the same type of work to do. We were doing some great work, so it was definitely more memorable than the years I had with Mr. Lack.

BR: Tell me about your second year?
Bruno: So in my 2nd year in Minneapolis I began to study with Mr. Lack. Lack, Steve Gjertson, and Don Koestner were the instructors and three very good teachers. They all had different styles and I learned how to work in color. I was doing color my second year and doing still lives and my first portrait. It was eye-opening. I really had to get used to the whole methodology. This was the year that Mike came up. So Mike and a few others from Chicago. We had this whole Chicago contingency. However, I also had my eye on other art forms. I was never fully committed to the Classical Realism philosophy they preached up there. I was just really interested in the skill base that they were offering. As for the role of the artist and what art means in our society today, I probably had a different view than my teachers. I respected them, and I still do, however I just had a little different vision of what I thought representational art should be in our day and age. Fred Berger was a big part of that too. Fred was a very open-minded guy and had this worldliness to him. He always told me to think beyond the box and it really helped me get through those years where I wasn’t just solely interested in this philosophy and this movement. I was just trying to learn as much as I could about drawing and painting well.

BR: Was the basic course of instruction at Atelier Lack similar to what we do here at SORA now?
Bruno: It was identical, however I have incorporated into SORA various components that were not stressed at Atelier Lack. It was cast drawings, still lives, portraits. I never did finish an interior painting, which I regret. I probably should have. I accelerated fast. I was painting color in my 2nd year and the full nude in color near my second year. So I really pushed myself and worked very hard to get things done. Maybe I was a little too aggressive at times, but thats just my manner. I wanted to plow through the education. I knew that I had some financial restraints. I didn’t know how many years I could go there. I was not working. I just wanted to be totally devoted to learning. When I was at the American Academy I was juggling a job, and all the stresses with that. I always felt my work suffered immensely because I had limited time. So when I went to Minneapolis, I figured it’s time to go down that monk route. I wanted to just eat tuna fish and burgers and study art. I did suffer a lot. It was a very humbling experience. It taught me to the be appreciative of things. I was very lonely. I met a lot of strange people. It’s amazing when you are at that level, you meet a lot of colorful people and I was kind of part of that world. It was very interesting but I would not want to do it again. Minneapolis was a great city, but it was not a city I wanted to live in very long. I did not connect with it entirely. I felt lonely. Chicago is my home.

BR: When you were studying at Atelier Lack, what was the attitude held by the teachers as to what a student would do after completing the program?
Bruno: I think they wanted you to carry on the tradition. I may be presumptuous in saying this but I think Mr. Lack respected that I was from Chicago. He thought I could bring that kind of work to a major metropolitan city, and I did. I really believe I’ve carried on his tradition here in Chicago. I’ve made a name for myself. Maybe not in the Classical Realism tradition, necessarily, but I still do representational artwork. But I think in his mind he was excited that we were all up there and we would spread the word. I think we have. Again, I wouldn’t be here today without Mr. Lack and his school. I’ve tried to maintain the friendship with him over the years, maybe a distant friendship. I also learned a lot about teaching. Now that I’m older, I can understand some of his manner and how it is an emotional thing to teach. When you have students invested in your school, you just know that there are very few that really know what it takes to make it. I could tell he was frustrated at times with his students. He would pull back, because students were not working enough or blowing off class. So he was very cautious in his teaching. When I was a student I was very upset about that because I thought he was too cautious at times. But now that I’m older I understand some of the demands students make of you. Some students just don’t want to work that hard or find that this type of program is really going to help them. Because they don’t know what it takes to do the work. I would never hold back at all. I understand more about him now that I’ve gotten older.

BR: Did Lack, Gjertson and Koestner talk about their own experiences as Atelier students?
Bruno: Yeah, Mr. Lack would talk about his experience with Gammell (R. H. Ives Gammell). And Mr. Gjertson would talk about his experience with Gammell. Don Koestner, who I liked a lot, was more of an impressionist painter. He seemed to be the most interesting guy and had more of a broader base. They talked about their discipline. They talked about the stress of fitting into the modern era with their art. I think a lot of them were very bitter. They believed they were on a mission to change or improve the art world and bring it back to maybe what it was during the pinnacle periods of what it was in the 19th century. I always thought it was a little far fetched, but I did listen. I did not really confront them but I just felt a little differently about the pluralistic world we live in. I always felt it was too ambitious and unrealistic to think you can change the art world.

BR: Tell me about Mr. Lack as an artist. Did he ever talk to you all about that when you studied with him?
Bruno: He never got into his personal art. He was a distant man. He had a lot to say about art in general. It was always about how the art world is kind of a joke and full of showmanship, which he had a right to feel that. He was raised in an era when non-representational work was highly accepted and representational training was not even heard of. So he was kind of bitter about it. His Jungian psychology was about the human mind and the archetypes that we all have. He connected with that philosophy for some reason and used it as imagery for his creative ideas. He enjoyed allegories and imagination, as well, and he just presented it through some psychological analysis of Jungian philosophy and that was his form of expression. He had a strong command of technical skills, so it was always enjoyable to hear him talk about his methods, how he set up models, how they posed for him, how he worked from life and used color studies, so he taught us some of the methods as well. He taught more about painting than Fred. Fred was more of a draftsman, so Mike and I were very fortunate we had both teachers. But Mr. Lack was a little reserved, he didn’t offer a lot unless you really pressed him. And that was sad as a student, because you know we wanted to learn so bad, and always felt like he was holding back. And I don’t know why. I can’t understand it. As a teacher now, I would never hold back information if I knew it. I’m not saying he did it maliciously, there was just something in his mind that just never opened up to people. People must have really pushed him. I just felt it was a lot of time wasted as a student trying to get that information from him. So there was a lot of confusion in being a student of his. And sometimes it was a tad exhausting because we just wanted to learn and not worry about who we were that day, we just were just innocent students learning. And I learned a lot. As for my students now, I give it to them. I care. Its part of a job as a teacher.

BR: Did Lack have his own studio apart from the school?
Bruno: Yes, he had his own studio in his house. He would come in once and a while to teach, but he would never bring his work. He was busy. We did go to his studio a couple times, so I did see his work first hand. It was enjoyable. He’s a very talented man, and I respect his art and his beliefs and I always was highly respectful of him as a man. I just didn’t like when he put students down or play with their minds too much. Its not necessary to fool with young minds that are just learning who they are. Trying to mold them was really unhealthy. We all try to teach our principles, but we don’t want to take the individualism out of the student. In some ways he thought he was trying to start this whole movement, and it had good intentions, but it just didn’t have to be that strong of a philosophy while we were students.

BR: Can you tell me about Pietro Annigoni?
Bruno: He was amazing draftsman. He had this Goya-esque vision that was political and was also powerful. He had this amazing vision of humanity because he lived through the wars and seemed to have a profound insight into the modern era, yet he appreciated the past. So he was one of those artists who really married the two together in a brilliant way with top notch skill but also with powerful universal subject matter that is as good as anybody. So a very underrated artist in the U.S., but definitely a motivating person in our day and age. He was an artist who we could look to and say ‘he did it,’ .even though he was in a very traditional city, in Florence. He just had the mind and the talent that was unparalleled in his day. And he struggled, because his work was not accepted on the grand scale of art, but I’m sure a lot of people to this day respect him. In Florence he was an icon.

BR: So he would have been alive and working when you were studying?
Bruno: Yes, and when I was in Florence in 1986. Unfortunately he was away the day I went to his studio. I had a chance to meet him, but it was not in the cards. He was painting a town called Poggibonzi, and I didn’t have access to a car, and I could not go out there. But I did meet his assistants. I saw where he sat. They gave me a bunch of stuff. Annigoni passed away in 89. I still have dreams of meeting him. When I was there, I thought I would run in to him in the street. I used to walk by his studio and see his doorbell. It said ‘Annigoni’ and I wanted to ring it all the time but they would not allow you in unless you had a letter. So I did get a letter from Charles Cecil and that was how I got to visit. The people who worked for him were super nice. Then I met a whole met a series of his former students, and I became part of that little entourage, just for a short period. The one thing about Florence, I would say, is it’s kind of alike a black hole. You get sucked in and you never want to leave. It’s a throwback to the 15th century. However, I just felt like I wanted to be a modern painter and be in a modern city. You could live there and have a good life there, but it just seemed a little too old, without modern overtones, and still a traditional city.

Click here for Part Two of this interview.

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