This selection of artworks by Joseph O’Sickey ’40 represents almost four decades of the artist’s studio practice. Widely recognized for his lush paintings of fecund garden scenery and maximalist interiors, O’Sickey also frequently explored animals as subjects throughout his career. His lifelong affinity for animals inspired scenes ranging from performing circus elephants, exotic cats and horses to caged zoo creatures.   

This small, focused survey brings together stylistically distinctive paintings in which animals become vehicles for painterly experimentation—at times, appearing as iconographic forms that abstract and disrupt the relationship between figure and ground, and at others, functioning as emotionally potent images merged with paint.  

O’Sickey’s loose, casual mark-making, affinity for exuberant color and interest in nature, often labeled him as an impressionist—a label he rejected. His direct approach to painting was less concerned with capturing the impression of a fleeting momentand more focused on the material properties of paint itself and its potential for poetic evocation.  

 About Joseph O’Sickey  
Joseph O'Sickey, born in Detroit in 1918, was a painter and educator who lived and worked in Cleveland for a majority of his career. He graduated from the Cleveland School of Art (now the Cleveland Institute of Art) in 1940 and taught at The Ohio State University (1946–47), Akron Art Institute (1949–52), Western Reserve University School of Architecture (1956–64) and Kent State University (1964–89). 

Throughout his prolific career, O’Sickey produced hundreds of paintings inspired by nature, animals and maximal interior spaces. Well known for his expert use of color and poetic gestural mark-making, O’Sickey was part of the storied “Cleveland School” artists, which included the likes of renowned CIA faculty members Paul Travis 1917, John Paul Miller ’40, Henry Keller 1892, Carl Gaertner 1923, William Eastman 1912 and Kenneth Bates, with whom he studied.  

O’Sickey’s work became some of the most honored and recognized in Northeast Ohio at the time, having won numerous prestigious awards and represented in many private and public collections, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Canton Museum of Art, Ohio; Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; and Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia.  
 
O'Sickey was represented in New York by Jacques Seligmann Galleries during the 1960s and 1970s, which presented seven one-person shows of his work, and by Kennedy Galleries in the 1980s and 1990s.  In Ohio, notable exhibitions include a Distinguished Alumnus one-person show at the Cleveland Institute of Art (1982); a one-person show at the Canton Museum of Art (1995); and representation in 24 May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art between 1938 and 1977.  

The Joseph B. ’40 and Algesa O’Sickey Scholarship Fund  
After the passing of Joseph O’Sickey and his beloved wife Algesa O’Sickey, the Joseph B. ’40 and Algesa O'Sickey Scholarship was established for the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2013. As part of this generous gift, the O’Sickey family requested that the scholarship be partially funded through proceeds from the sale of artworks from the artists’ estate.  

To honor the O’Sickeys’ vision of supporting CIA students for generations to come, CIA has partnered with WOLFS Gallery to thoughtfully steward the estate and preserve the family’s creative legacy.  

Gallery hours:
Mon–Thu: 10am–4pm; Fri: 10am–2pm. Closed Sat, Sun. Closed June 19, July 3.

SPONSORS

Reinberger Gallery programming is supported in part by the residents of Cuyahoga County, through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture. Our exhibitions are also generously supported by CIA's Community Partners.