Anthony Sisti

1901 – 1983

Anthony (Tony) J. Sisti was born in 1901 in Greenwich Village, New York City. He began to box in 1917 in a Buffalo, N.Y. gym and the next year won the amateur bantamweight championship of New York State. From then until 1930, he fought 100 professional bouts, lost 15, and earned enough money to go to Europe five years and enough while there to pay for tuition at the Florence Academy, where he got his doctor’s degree in Painting.

As an Artist, Sisti was known for his bold use of color and form, and many of his paintings had a boxing motif. Among those he painted were Alfred E. Smith of New York and Giovanni Adnelli, president of the Ford Motor Company. He even traveled with Ernest Hemmingway to the Congo.

In 1931, Sisti found himself without funds to return to Buffalo while in Florence, so he boxed in Rome, winning enough money for his fare. From 1932 to 1938, he was a teacher at the Buffalo Art Institute and then he taught at the School of Applied Design for Women in New York City. As a WPA artist during the Depression, Sisti did murals in western New York including the University of Buffalo, and chose boxing as his subjects. Late in his boxing career, he used the winnings from a fight to finance an exhibition of his art in New York City. In 1938, he established Sisti Galleries in Buffalo and is credited with having helped establish the watercolorist Charles Burchfield.

Sisti died in 1983 at the age of 82 in New York. He is listed in the Who was Who in American Art 1564 – 1975 Vol. III as well as Artnet.com, AskArt.com, Time Magazine, and The New York Times.