Manny Cosentino is a Los Angeles based figurative painter who was born in New York City in 1958. Working primarily in oils, he paints realistic figure compositions, portraits, still lives and urban landscapes. He completed his formal training in art at UCLA with honors (MFA 1983,) and credits one of his teachers there, hyper-realist James Valerio, as having had the most artistic influence on him during that period.

Cosentino considers himself a “classical” realist because he looks at Art History, especially the art of Western Europe and the Renaissance to find precedents for many of his works. One can see evidence of this in the compositional choices he makes and in the painting techniques he uses; tonal underpainting, grisaille, and glazing. Though not so popular today, these methods were mainstream when oil painting first developed. In the 2007, east coast artist Martha Mayer Erlebacher helped Cosentino incorporate these techniques into his oeuvre.

Cosentino has exhibited his work locally and nationally. In 2022 he participated in Brand 50; 50th Annual National Juried Exhibition of Works on Paper, at the Brand Library and Art Center in Glendale, CA. In 2018, he showed a portrait in Italianitá; Italian Diaspora Artists Examine Identity, at the Italian American Museum in Los Angeles, CA. In 2005 some of his figure compositions were featured in The Painted Image: Works by Emanuel Cosentino, Domenic Cretara, Joe Forkan, Samantha Minear and Erin Palmer, at Biola University in La Mirada, CA. And in 2000, Gordon Fuglie, then curator of the Laband Art Gallery at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles included one of Cosentino’s still lives in Representing L.A.: Pictorial Currents in Southern California Art, a large comprehensive exhibit that took place over a two year period, going first to the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, WA, then to the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christie, TX, and finally to the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach CA.

The artist has garnered many awards and citations. Most recently in 2024, he was a Finalist in the Portrait Society of America’s Members Only Competition, (non-commissioned portrait.) In 2017, he was presented with the Sharon D. Lund Master Teaching Artist Award by Ryman Arts, which he used to take his first trips to the Louvre in Paris and to the National Gallery in London. In 2012, he received a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from the Congress of the United States House of Representatives for his contribution to the Los Angeles Metro neighborhood poster series. 

Cosentino has taught painting and drawing for many years in southern California, at institutions such as UCLA Extension, Barnsdall Art Center, Los Angeles Mission College, California State University Long Beach, and Ryman Arts. From 2009 to 2015 he worked at the Judson Stained Glass Studios in Los Angeles as one of the lead stained glass painters there. His stained glass painting can be seen on many of the windows for the Church of Our Savior at the Caruso Catholic center, USC, completed by Judson in 2012.

In addition to art, Cosentino loves opera and singing. In 1981, he began taking voice lessons with Louise Caselotti, contralto, and former opera singer. Louise’s sister was Adriana Caselotti, the voice of Walt Disney’s Snow White, and her most famous pupil was Maria Callas (who had studied with Louise in New York City from 1946-47.) Cosentino studied with Caselotti for eighteen years until she passed away in 1999, by which time he was singing at a professional level.