The earliest known reference to baseball ever recorded in American history dates back to the late18th century in Massachusetts. The first team who played under modern rules – the New York Knickerbockers – dates back to the mid-19th century. Over time, the sport has of course evolved, but it has been around for quite a while. The sport evolved over time and many people helped mold it to become the sport we know and love.
Many of those people were Italian-Americans.
An art exhibit currently running at the Convivio Center in Little Italy is showcasing the great Italian-American athletes who contributed to baseball history and who helped make the sport what it is today.
The Artists’ Tribute to Italian-Americans in Baseball will run through the remainder of the month, with a special “Meet the Artists” event this Sunday, Jan. 12 at 6:30 p.m.
New York-based sports artist Vincent Scilla will be one of the guests of honor, alongside San Diego’s own Christopher Paluso to meet with attendees and discuss his artwork.
Having tried his hand at multiple facets of art – including film and photography – Scilla is best known for his baseball paintings, which depicts a solitary baseball figure against a graphic background, reminiscent of the baseball cards he used to collect as a child.
“I played a lot of baseball as a kid and I collected baseball cards,” Scilla said. “When I looked at the baseball cards, especially in the mid-50s era, I’d see the ball players and they’d always be photographed and in the background were advertisements. When I really started to get serious about making art, I gravitated towards baseball since it’s one of my favorite subjects.”
Scilla explains that baseball’s diversity makes it a “tireless” topic for him: Its various positions and action poses work well with the figurative type of art Scilla prefers. For him, the sport and his spin on it in his work “evokes a certain Americana, a certain nostalgia to the time when I first became aware of a sport and held an interest in it.”
The key lesson Scilla learned early on in his career, he says, is to “paint what you know and what you like. And I found baseball to be a very good subject for me.”
An Italian-American himself from Detroit, Michigan, Scilla states that while there is more cultural awareness today, his generation was one that focused more on assimilating to the traditional American lifestyle. For example, he says, “We’d have an Italian diet – pasta on Wednesdays and fish and lasagna and so forth – but we’d mix it with American-style food as well. As a kid, though, I was never really aware of [my heritage].”
Despite that, Scilla says, he’s found that he always gravitates back to his Italian background, “from the foods I ate to the films I watched to the art I like.”
As times have changed, Scilla has noted a revival of cultural pride. “Now with centers like the Convivio Center, there’s more awareness that has really come around in the recent past and it’s really refreshing. A lot of other groups have their museums and organizations, so it’s good to see Italian-Americans are doing that more these days. So I’m proud of that.”
More information on Scilla can be found at his website (www.vincentscilla.com) and more information regarding the “Meet the Artists” event is available at the Convivio Society website.
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