John Tagiuri

John Tagiuri was born January 27th, 1955 in Boston Massachusetts to Consuelo (Keller) and Renato Tagiuri. The youngest of three sons, he grew up with his brothers Robert and Peter Tagiuri, and his grandmother, Adela (Rios) Keller, in Cambridge, MA. Their parents met in Montreal and moved to Cambridge so that Renato could pursue his PhD where he taught sociology at the School of Arts and Sciences. Renato then moved to Harvard Business School to teach organizational behavior. Consuelo was one of the first women to complete medical school at UC San Francisco and was the first Spanish-speaking child psychiatrist in the Boston area. She spent most of her career working at the City of Cambridge Mental Health Center and at the Gifford School. John had formative childhood memories of traveling for Renato’s teaching positions in his home country, Italy, as well as Istanbul, Japan, and Hawaii. John attended Shady Hill Elementary School in Cambridge MA where his capacities as an artist were immediately apparent. His sculptures were far beyond his years and he thrived in the woodshop. He attended Putney in Vermont for high school, a farm-based boarding school where he spent hours happily working in the stables, pulling pranks with lifelong friends like Mark Connors, and appreciating natural beauty. In a prank gone too far, he was dismissed from Putney and finished high school at Cambridge Rindge and Latin. After graduating he attended Cornell, and shortly after graduating began a Master's in Fine Art at Columbia. During one of his first studio visits, he was swiftly scouted by artist Denis Oppenheim who needed a model built in the next 24 hours. John pulled it off and he quickly began a prolific career designing and fabricating large-scale artworks. He continued to fabricate work for Dennis Oppenheim and fabricated for many artists including many of artist Vito Acconci’s sculptures. The two worked on and off together until Vito’s passing in 2017. From the Venice Biennale to MoMA, to the Art Institute of Chicago, John had countless stories of engineering near-impossible sculptures with crunched timelines. It earned him a reputation as an expert fabricator and captivating storyteller. In the 80’s he started to devote his time to his own work and was a prolific maker throughout his career. After a two year marriage to his first wife Jeffery Howell in 1989 he met Elena Saporta a landscape architect living in Jamaica Plain. Elena Saporta and John Tagiuri married on New Years Eve and welcomed their daughter Lily Consuelo Saporta Tagiuri May 31st 1990. He and Elena often collaborated and John had a thriving public art practice throughout the 90’s and 2000’s.Highlights include giant installations at Boston’s First Night, public playgrounds and classrooms for Boston area city schools, and a series of environmental activism artworks. Two of his iconic projects were Trash Temple, an installation made with the waste of a family of four in a year, or Earth on Empty a project where he organized ticketing of SUVs across the US with an artful educational parking ticket lookalike. You can see much of his artwork and permanent installations around the Boston Area such as Ramler Park. His large-format photographs are part of the American Heritage Society. In 2008, John and Elena separated. In 2010 he married Lynda Rowe, and helped raised and care for her three children Sarah, Hannah and Jonathon Rudolph. John and Lynda were officially separated in 2023.

Throughout his life, he volunteered with a range of organizations including Food Not Bombs and worked with students at Jane Goodall’s foundation, Roots and Shoots. For more than ten years he volunteered with Sailing Heals to take people with terminal illnesses on sails with their families. He was an extremely talented sailor and won many classic boat races including The Opera House Cup Regatta and the Corinthian Classic Regatta. This summer he was awarded the Annisquam Yacht Club Smith Trophy in 2024 for outstanding achievement and extraordinary contributions to the sport of sailing. In the last few years, he began making public artworks again and most recently was part of an installation at the Manship Artist Residency and a collaboration with his daughter Lily which was shown at The Museum of The City of New York. He was living in Gloucester Massachusetts where he was a vital member of a vibrant community of artists and creatives there. Up until his last conscious moments, he was really living, doing what he loved most, sailing and feeling the sea breeze. He passed on August 14th due to a brain aneurysm. He is survived by his brothers Robert and Peter, his daughter Lily, his nephews Rios, Nicco, and Orfeo, his niece Ana, and by his beloved friends. Preparations for a memorial in May 2025 are in the works. To know John Tagiuri was to know his warm radiant smile, his unbridled generosity, his creative genius, and his joy of life. He is dearly missed by the many people who loved him. He lived a full and vibrant life. If you would like to be in touch you can write to his daughter: lily.tagiuri@gmail.com

To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of John Tagiuri, please visit our floral store.