In 1955 Vera Knight, Jennie Lea Knight and Nancy Lloyd decided to create an art gallery. This was a response to all the artwork that Jennie Lea Knight and Nancy Lloyd were accumulating. Jennie Lea Knight's parents bought this home at 814 Prince Street in Alexandria, Va in 1956. They were Virginia's first professional art gallery and they showed both emerging artists, who found it hard to find a place to show, and prints from blue-chip artists like Miro and Picasso. Thus, the first floor of this home became Studio Gallery.
Francisco Moncion: Painting Influenced by Ballet by Francisca Rudolph
On October 19th, in the late 1950's, Studio Gallery proudly opened Francisco Moncion’s first solo exhibition to the public. Moncion was a self-taught Dominican dancer and painter who began to pursue his interest in the visual arts at around the same time that his ballet career took off. His paintings, which were influenced by his experience as a dancer, depict his profound interest and love for the arts. Moncion’s particular artistic style expresses the dynamics of life in the ballet world as well as the fast paced characteristics of the city.
In 1961, Francisco Moncion returned to the Studio Gallery for his second solo exhibition. This time around his paintings showed a more “haunting quality” with new additional themes of skeletal figures, decay, and disaster. On this fiftieth anniversary of the Studio Gallery, we want to honor artists like Francisco Moncion who created such personal and unique compositions of his passion for the arts.