Antonio Prieto (1912–1967) was a

ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...

artist and art professor at

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was ...

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

. He was instrumental in developing an important ceramics collection for the Mills College Art Museum. He was born in Yaldepenas, Spain on August 23, 1912, and died in Oakland on March 11, 1967.

History

Prieto immigrated to the United States as a child in 1916. After studying at

Alfred University Alfred University is a private university in Alfred (village), New York, Alfred, New York. It has a total undergraduate population of approximately 1,600 students. The university hosts the New York State College of Ceramics, which includes The ...

from 1943 to 1946, he chaired the Ceramics Program and taught at California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland (now

California College of the Arts California College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996 it opened a second campus in San ...

) from 1946 to 1950. At the time, F. Carlton Ball was teaching ceramics at Mills College. When Ball left Mills, Prieto succeeded him. While teaching at Mills College from 1950 to 1967, Prieto compiled a personal collection of ceramic art, including works by

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Peter Voulkos Peter Voulkos (born Panagiotis Harry Voulkos; 29 January 1924 – 16 February 2002) was an American artist of Greek descent. He is known for his abstract expressionist ceramic sculptures, which crossed the traditional divide between ceramic cr ...

, and

Marguerite Wildenhain Marguerite Wildenhain, née Marguerite Friedlaender and alternative spelling ''Friedländer'' (October 11, 1896 – February 24, 1985), was an American Bauhaus-trained ceramic artist, educator and author. After immigrating to the United States in ...

. After Prieto's death, artists contributed more works to a memorial collection, bringing the total to over 400 works. In 1970, the Prieto family donated the collection to the college. An Antonio Prieto Gallery was created adjacent to the Tea Shop at Mills, and the collection was exhibited there for several years. In 2004 the artist's sons, Esteban, Mark, Peter, and Paco Prieto, and his widow Eunice Damron donated his papers to the

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...

as part of the Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America.http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/antonio-prieto-papers-11148 Antonio Prieto Papers, 1947-1967, retrieved 29 August 2013 Robert Arneson studied with Prieto and mentioned him numerous times in hi
oral history interview
in the Archives of American Art.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Prieto, Antonio Artists from California American ceramists Italian emigrants to the United States 1912 births 1967 deaths 20th-century ceramists