Portrait of Bob

In this portrait of Bob Elser, the handsome young man sits cross-legged in front of a bright yellow curtain, casting a provocative eye toward the viewer. Elser's partner was Theodore Straetter, bandleader for the Ted Straetter Orchestra in New York, and a close friend of artist Luigi Lucioni.
Born in Malnate, Italy, in 1900, Lucioni immigrated to America as a boy and became one of America's well-known landscape painters. His work has been noted for its heightened realism and photographic attention to detail. He tended to paint portraits only of close friends and acquaintances, often members of New York's arts and music scene.

Lucioni's work was heavily inspired by the realism of early Italian Renaissance painting. He championed this style at a time when European Modernism was gaining momentum in the United States. His crisp, somewhat flat pattern and detail have been likened to the microscopic approach of the fifteenth-century Flemish masters.