School of Visual Arts (SVA) President David Rhodes has announced the appointment of Riccardo Vecchio as chair of the College’s MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program, effective July 24, 2023. An alumnus of the program and a Fulbright scholarship recipient when he was accepted in 1994, Vecchio will only be its second official chair since founder Marshall Arisman passed away in 2022. Faculty member David Sandlin served as acting chair in the interim, while a national search was conducted. Vecchio has been an SVA faculty member since 1997, teaching drawing at the undergraduate level and in the Continuing Education program. In 2003 he became a thesis advisor in the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program and has taught second-year painting in the program since 2021.

“I have every confidence Riccardo will preserve Marshall’s legacy, while also leading the program into a new era,” said President Rhodes. “We had a large pool of well-qualified candidates and Riccardo stood out from the pack for his professional accomplishments, success as an educator and the vision he articulated for the program’s future.”

SVA Provost Christopher Cyphers said, “I am eager to work with Riccardo as he charts a new course for one of SVA’s oldest graduate programs. Illustration as a profession and a field of study is changing, and the search committee believed Riccardo has the experience and temperament to successfully guide the program through these changes.”

“Marshall Arisman left big shoes to fill, and I am honored to take the helm of the incredible program he created and from which I graduated,” said Vecchio. "My goal is to equip our students with the pictorial and intellectual skills necessary to enter an increasingly complex and difficult-to-define art and illustration environment, and to withstand the challenges that technology will throw at them soon. It is essential we foster a diverse, supportive and inclusive community of fellow artists to help hone and define their personal visual language.”

Born and raised in Milan and Germany, Vecchio grew up collecting magazines, some of which featured images of SVA’s own subway posters. His obsession became a full circle coincidence when he eventually attended graduate school at the College and joined the faculty shortly thereafter. A painter and illustrator, Vecchio studied under Arisman and earned the Paula Rhodes Memorial Award upon graduation.

Over the course of his wide-ranging career, Vecchio’s work has been featured in publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York Magazine, La Feltrinelli Editore (Italy), Die Zeit (Germany), Rolling Stone, Harper's and National Geographic. He has created vivid covers for Criterion Collection editions of films like Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women, Jonathan Demme’s A Master Builder, and Andrzej Wajda’s Danton, as well as for several Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, and book covers for Penguin, Putnam and others. His corporate clients have included The Verve Music Group, Adobe, FedEx and American Express.

Vecchio’s painted works have been shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions, both here and in Europe, including as the guest contemporary artist in connection with the George Bellows retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2013. In 2012, Vecchio was the featured artist in Where (we) Live, a live performance with “SO Percussion” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), part of the Next Wave Festival. The 2022 recipient of an NYC Artist Corp Grant, Vecchio created a public project to bring attention to issues of climate and environmental injustice with a launch held at the Brooklyn Public Library, which also commissioned a permanent 42-foot mural featured in the Dweck Gallery of the Central Brooklyn Library at Grand Army Plaza.

In addition to teaching at SVA for nearly 30 years, Vecchio has guest lectured or been a panelist at numerous museums and institutions, including MiMaster Istituto (Milan), NYU Institute of Fine Arts, The Brooklyn Museum, The Brooklyn Public Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Society of Illustrators. His numerous awards include the LEAD Award with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, American Illustration, Communication Arts, Society of Illustrators, Art Directors Club, The New York Times, and PRINT.

The MFA in Illustration as Visual Essay program at SVA is designed to maximize students’ opportunities as figurative artists, from the conventional gallery wall to the full range of 21st-century media. The program fuses the development of creative thinking with technical and communication skills. Additional focus is placed on best practices in navigating the visual art marketplace while empowering students to choose making art as a way of life.

School of Visual Arts has been a leader in the education of artists, designers and creative professionals for seven decades. With a faculty of distinguished working professionals, a dynamic curriculum and an emphasis on critical thinking, SVA is a catalyst for innovation and social responsibility. Comprising 7,000 students at its Manhattan campus and more than 41,000 alumni from 128 countries, SVA also represents one of the most influential artistic communities in the world. For information about the College’s 30 undergraduate and graduate programs, visit sva.edu.