"Man Do You Want To Educate Yourself? Think Up a New Slogan Every Morning,” self portrait by Josef Radler, watercolor, gouache and pencil on paper, 1917.
:A consummate collector, Anthony Petullo often takes time out of his busy schedule to contemplate the trove of artwork that paints the walls of his home, offices and the nonprofit learning center where he houses his collection. And, like the artists of which he is so enamored, one recurring theme perpetually defines Petullo's art experience; the similarities he notes between himself and the outsider and self-taught artists — and the differences they mutually share with the academic art world.
"I am a lot like them," exclaims Petullo with regard to his favorite artists. "Sometimes I can be a little crazy like some of them. I come up with some wild ideas. Sometimes those ideas work. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes I get a feeling and I just run with it."
And run he does.
In just three short years, after executing what the collector considers his first "true" art acquisition, Petullo had amassed more than 150 paintings by the most recognized and desirable outsider, self-taught, Gugging, nonacademic and naïve artists to have worked in the Twentieth Century. His collection had become the subject of a single-owner exhibition that toured the country, making stops at six different major museums, and he has since loaned works of art to numerous other shows and exhibitions as well.
Anthony Petullo's first "true” outsider purchase was Bill Traylor's "Brown Mule,” a pencil, crayon and gouache on board from 1939. It was the cover lot in Sotheby's Americana auction in 1990.
Today, the author, co-author or merely the subject of three books, one that has sold out twice, the collector is taking time to breathe it all in.
Petullo terms himself a "self taught" — he has never participated in any art history courses while in college, been exposed to antiques or art or had any conventional artistic training. An entrepreneur for 30 years, Petullo was afforded a glimpse of the art world early on in his career working as a marketing man for Mobil, perhaps unknowingly laying the foundation for his later appreciation of art.
Years later, as a successful businessman in Milwaukee, Petullo was asked by a friend to volunteer at the local Lakefront Arts Festival, an art show sponsored by the Milwaukee Art Museum. It was there that he purchased his first piece of "art," a nondescript painting by a "Sunday artist" that exhibited what he considered at the time to be desirable folk art qualities.
