Presentation on this important but generally overlooked American painter Edward E. Boccia (1921-2012). A professor of fine art for over thirty years at Washington University of St. Louis, Boccia was a dedicated teacher and learned poet and artist. Boccia's oeuvre offers a unique view into the diasporic community of Italian American artists (coloni) in the mid to late 20th century. This research examines how the works' complex pictorial language is a synthesis of symbols and stories from Greco-Roman mythology, the Passion of Christ, Modern and Renaissance Art History as well as riveting autobiography. The presentation will feature images of the artwork and commentary on the artist's lifetime dedication to teaching and developing artistic technique and original iconography to create a modernist body of work that interrogated the crisis of faith and materialism as well as universal problems such as spirituality, morality, war, consumerism, disease and personal loss.