Patsy Santo Exhibition at the Better Bennington Corporation

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On June 8, from 3-5:30 PM, a public opening will be held for the new exhibition Patsy Santo: Bennington Views. The exhibition has been organized for the BBC and the Bennington Museum, in cooperation with the Patsy Santo Paintings Trust, as part of a cooperative program to use the BBC Visitors Center at the corner of South and Elm Streets to introduce visitors (and residents!) to Bennington through its history and art. The exhibition goes on view June 1. The show and its opening are a part of the June Arts festival, organized by the Bennington Cultural and Arts Council in partnership with other area businesses and non-profits. More information on the festival can be found on the BBC web site at www.bennington.com Pasquale (Patsy) Santo (1893-1975) was a self-taught painter and lifelong resident of Bennington. Born in Italy, he came to the United States in 1913. Four years later, after working at various jobs in the Northeast he married and moved to Bennington, where he made a life-long profession as a house painter. Entirely self-educated in art, Santo began painting as an avocation in 1923, making designs and decorations for family and friends. His first commission was a mural in a local shoe repair shop. He decorated fabric as well. Too busy to continue, he stopped painting for some fifteen years, until murals done for his own house again attracted the attention of the community.. In 1937 he agreed to show at the Rutland State Fair, where he was seen by the prominent painter Walt Kuhn, who encouraged Santo not to look to others, but to develop a style of his own. In 1938 Santo exhibited three paintings at the Southern Vermont Arts Center, in Manchester. In 1939 he was included in the groundbreaking exhibition "Unknown American Artists" at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York. Santo lent three works, one of which was bought by the museum. In the show's publication Santo was described as among the "modern primitives*holding their own with professionals because of their intuitive, unhackneyed mastery of form and their simplicity of mind and heart." He was also called a "romantic primitive" and a "magical realist." Critics of the time admired Santo's poetic scenes, draftsman-like compositions, fresh colors and meticulous style. Writer, teacher and art historian Lane Faison later wrote, in 1954, that Santo's work showed "the authentic innocent eye." From 1940 on Patsy Santo showed widely throughout this country and abroad. Among the many major museums which exhibited or bought his work, besides the Museum of Modern Art, are the Whitney Museum, the Corcoran Gallery, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as important regional museums such as the Bennington Museum, the Canajoharie Art Gallery, the Addison Gallery, in Andover, Massachusetts, and the Currier Gallery of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire. Private collectors who sought out his work included Averell Harriman, Mrs.Vincent Astor, Mrs. Paul Mellon and Mrs. Payne Whitney, as well as the writer Lillian Hellman, actresses Helen Hayes and Hedy Lemarr, and the important designer Raymond Lowey. Reviews, illustrations and articles about his paintings appeared in Time, Newsweek, Art Digest and the New York Times, among many other publications, and were often reproduced as calendars, cards and prints. Santo was listed in World Biography and Who's Who in America. Today, the paintings of Patsy Santo remain in many private and public collections, including those of the Arts Center in Manchester and the Bennington Museum. His children continue to encourage interest in Santo through the Patsy Santo Paintings Trust, in order to bring the artist's work to the attention of a new generation who can appreciate its "intuitive, unhackneyed" simplicity, a combination of Old World style and New World scenes.
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Springfield Man Arraigned for 'Senseless' Murder in Pittsfield

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff

PITTSFIELD, Mass.— District Attorney Timothy Shugrue said Friday's fatal stabbing was a senseless act of violence. 

On Monday, Springfield man Zyrus Jaynes, 24, was arraigned for murder in Central Berkshire District Court for allegedly stabbing 36-year-old Pittsfield man Jesse Gray to death after a disagreement on Hall Place. 

Families of the victim and defendant were present at the arraignment.  Jaynes is being held without the right to bail because he is being presented to a grand jury, and will be back in court on July 1. 

"This was seconds. That fast, that quick. Just over someone pulling into a driveway with a car," Shugrue said. 

"…This is an incredible tragedy, over this? For what? It's just very, very sad." 

According to the Pittsfield Police Department's reports, just before 10 p.m. on May 29, officers were dispatched to the area of 10 Hall Place for a reported stabbing.  Upon arrival, they found Gray with a stab wound to the left side near his armpit and began rendering aid until fire and EMS arrived. 

Gray was transported to Berkshire Medical Center and passed away less than an hour after. 

"I think he was shocked that he was stabbed," Shugrue said. 

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