America!!!Rejected and humiliated by her homeland,Casali sought out America as a refuge. Butwhile the Land of the Free did provide herwith the artistic license she so desperatelyrequired, Casali quickly found herself perilously short of funds.

Forced by cruel circumstance into secretarialwork, Casali found office life unbearable,escaping the banality of administrative tasksonly through the soaring imagination thatwas her art.

Not unlike Gustave Courbet’s “The StoneBreakers,” Casali’s art embraced a grittysocial realism that forced the viewer into aconfrontation with the brutal nature ofmodern employment.

DespairUnfortunately, Casali’s employer construedher efforts as “communist” and, in a misguided attempt to do his part for theAmerican war effort in Vietnam, abruptlydismissed her. “The dominos stop here!” he raged as he sent her shamefaced outonto the street.

Betrayed and confused, Casali spiraled intothe first of the deep depressions that wouldmar her later years. Her sense of identityfragmented, her art suffered a shockingparallel disintegration of identity. Note howthe works from this period evince a changeboth in subject and predicate, a jarring disconnect that would never again be seenin her pictures.

LoveIs101503.qxp 10/17/03 3:44 PM Page 2

A New BeginningAnd, as if the mere saying of the wordshad a talismanic effect, within weeksCasali had met the love of her life, Italianimmigrant Roberto Casali.

Her new happiness spurred her into themost intense creative period of her life, andby the time they were married, Casali hadgiven the world such enduring monu-ments as her unforgettable “Cherish”triptych:

Yet, it was here, at this lowest point in her life,struggling somehow to make ends meet, andoddly ambivalent towards gigantic robots,that Casali discovered the key syntactic formula that was to be the backbone of herglory years.

At last, Casali had discovered “Love is...”

LoveIs101503.qxp 10/17/03 3:44 PM Page 3

Golden HandcuffsThe nation soon became enamored of the“Love is...” series and she became syndicatedby the Los Angeles Times. T-shirts, coffeemugs, and calendars provided a steadystream of income, upon which the Casalissoon came to depend.

Saddled by ever-greater debts, Casali beganchurning out “Love is...” pictures on anhourly basis just to stay afloat. This hugeeffort took its psychic toll on Casali, whobecame increasingly desperate in hersearch for metaphors, often relying onbizarre combinations of the fantastic andthe mundane. In one particularly productiveafternoon in April 1973, Casali wrote that“Love is...” over 276 different possibilities,including... “an alligator with wings, butwith sharper teeth than a regular alligatorwould have,” “A reclining chair that spins,but not so much that you get dizzy,” and“Pretending you’re a pirate all day just tostay sane, aaaarrgh!”

StagnationYet amazingly, despite what she deemed tobe a decline in the quality of her insights,her adoring public continued to clamor forCasali cartoons.

Disheartened and disillusioned by the public’s over-enthusiastic appraisal ofher art, Casali turned to the Californiahyper-realists in an attempt to recapturethe authenticity of experience that hadpermeated her earliest works.

The Los Angeles Times, however, was lessforgiving of her forays into Post-Modernism,never running what many consider her finestwork, “Love is... big-headed, etc.”

LoveIs101503.qxp 10/17/03 3:44 PM Page 4

Love Is...Forever?Tragically, Kim Casali died in 1997 at the ageof 55. Yet her legacy did not die with her.

Fueled by the same passion as his mother,Stefano Casali has taken up the challengeof “Love is...” and already his work is being compared favorably.

The burden of continuing the work of this century’s most prolific and beloved artistobviously weighs heavy on the young man,who attempts to deflect the pressurethrough humor.

“No one can ever fill my mother’s shoes,”stated Stefano in a 2001 interview on theOxygen Network. “Oh, who am I kidding,she was a perfect size 7B.”

Nonetheless, the impact of such enormousexpectation has already transmogrified itselfinto a refreshing new vision in Stefano’s art,at once both a fitting homage to the past anda bold new step into the future.

We are fortunate, indeed, that the age-oldquestions about love are constantly beingredefined by such a distinguished line.

TragedyIn 1976, Casali’s devoted husband died ofcancer. In her grief, Casali turned to a reputable San Fernando psychoanalyst, Dr.Charlie Tan. Through Dr. Tan’s sessions,Casali began a voyage of self-discoveryconsisting almost entirely of recoveredmemories brought out while under hypnosis.

These “dream” sessions gave Casali’s laterwork a darkness that proved disturbing to many. Indeed, her popularity slowlydeclined throughout the ’80s and ’90s as sheexplored the deepest reaches of her sexuality.

In 1995, Casali produced her least popularpiece, sold to syndication as “Love is... theworld’s greatest uncle.”

LoveIs101503.qxp 10/17/03 3:44 PM Page 5