Museums & Recognition

Commissioned Murals

Rocco’s paintings can be found in both museum and private collections here and abroad where they are displayed alongside the great historical artists of the past. His paintings exude a style and sensitivity in this genre that is unique among his contemporaries. We pride ourselves at Tradition Studios in having the finest prints and smallest editions available on the market today.

1992

Wisconsin Veteran’s Museum

1992

This first mural museum project came about somewhat by accident. The museum designer had seen my painting, ‘Through the Cornfield’, while doing research for one of the planned life-size dioramas for the museum. The designer contacted me by phone to ask about details in my painting, and at the end of the conversation, he asked if I had any interest in possibly painting this mural for the Veteran’s Museum. Knowing of the great panorama paintings of the late 19^th century and fantasizing about painting something along those lines one day, without much hesitation I said, “Yes!”. After I hung up, only then did I realize that I had no idea how to go about painting something so large. It was a bit of trial and error for the first week or so, but eventually I figured out a method of working. The project expanded in the meantime to include two WWII scenes as well, the island of Buna and the Battle of the Bulge.

1998

Pamplin Historical Park

1997-1998

Six years after the completion of the Wisconsin Veteran’s Museum, I was contacted by one of the directors at the new Pamplin Historical Park asking if I would consider creating a series of murals for the under-construction National Museum of the Civil War Soldier. After visiting the site and having the confidence of working on a large scale from the Veteran’s Museum project, I took on the commission of designing and painting five separate murals, a combined total of over 3,370 square feet. The project took over a year to complete from conception to finish. For the actual painting I hired two assistants from Los Angeles who had experience painting backdrops for the movie industry. They were instrumental in painting the skyscapes and landscapes while I concentrated on the animals and figures in the paintings. The museum was being built around us as we worked, and it was not uncommon to have construction crews pounding nails and sanding drywall on one side of the wall while we painted the opposite side. Because of the short deadline, once the actual painting commenced, 12-hour work days were the norm for all three of us. The murals were completed within a few days of the museum’s grand opening.

2003

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum

2003

With the work experience at National Museum of the Civil War Soldier still fresh in my mind, four years later I was approached by the design company charged with creating the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum. The project was the design and creation of two murals for the new museum, one an allegorical scene of the Battle of Gettysburg and the dedication of the cemetery there, the other a scene of the attack on Ft. Wagner in 1863.

I wasn’t too keen on spending 5-6 months away from home so it was agreed that I would create two studio-size paintings which a scenic shop ( that is a movie back-drop studio in Hollywood ) would then reproduce full-size. These full- size paintings were then rolled and shipped to the museum to be glued on the walls of the appropriate galleries. Once this was done, I travelled to Springfield, Illinois and worked for two months adding details such as faces and equipment and, generally, putting my style into the murals.

2010

Marengo Museum

2009-2010

In 2009 I received an email from a gentleman in Italy inquiring if I would be interested in creating some works that ultimately would hang in a new museum in Italy devoted to the Battle of Marengo. Enlargements of the paintings would be highlights in several of the galleries of the museum, I was told. Thus, over a period of more than a year, I worked on the seven subjects with research assistance coming from two good friends and iconography collectors in Europe. Though technically not painted murals, I include them in this list of museums because of their grand-scale presentation to the museum visitor.

2020

Cantigny Park, First Division Museum

2019-2020

This project was personally very close to me since this museum at Cantigny Park was the first history museum I ever visited and one that I would visit repeatedly growing up in Chicago. I was probably 8 or 9 years old when my parents took me to the First Division Museum. I could never have dreamed then that more than 55 years later I would receive an inquiry from the museum curator asking if I would like to create two murals for none other than the flagship gallery of the museum, the D-Day exhibit. It was a quick “yes” to his question. After a site visit, I determined that a full-size tracing of the existing spaces was the first step for this project. With these in hand I returned home, and after moving every piece of furniture from the largest wall in the studio, I taped the first tracing to the wall. Working into the existing skyscape of the old mural, I added a new beach. Onto this I designed the new composition of landing crafts and figures for the June 6^th landing mural and then the June 7^th build-up mural. After five months in the studio of sketching, resketching and eventually finishing two final full-size drawings, I returned to the museum in January of 2020 with a van-full of supplies to begin the painting. The June 6^th mural took 211 hours to complete, the June 7^th, 267. Ironically the day that the final brushstrokes were applied to the second mural, March 15^th, the museum closed at 3pm due to the pandemic. There, for many months, the murals silently waited for the return of the public.