Nick Palazzo

1961–1991

Nick Palazzo was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1961. An Anglophone of Italian descent, he often thought of himself as a man without a country. He studied fine arts at Dawson College, withdrawing before graduation, finding the classes superfluous and uninteresting. In 1983, Nick moved in with his friend and lover, Andre, who promoted his work and managed to organize two solo exhibitions, one of which included 300 paintings. Andre died of AIDS in 1986. In 1988 Nick developed AIDS-related symptoms. Though he was young, poor and often ill, Nick Palazzo completed over two thousand paintings before his death at the age of thirty in 1991. He recorded street life as he knew it. He provided an intimate and stark look at what it was like to live on the edge. Critics have noted that Palazzo’s work includes elements of Cubism, Surrealism, Impressionism and Expressionism all at once, in an amalgam of style. Like Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dali and Francis Bacon, three artists whom he has been compared to, Palazzo’s oeuvre resonates with a visceral intensity, evoking both the pain of existence and the sublime beauty of the natural world.

More information about the artist can be found in Mary Melfi's book, Painting Moments, Art, AIDS and Nick Palazzo (Guernica Editions, 1998).