Ettore "Ted" DeGrazia (June 14, 1909 – September 17, 1982) was an American impressionist, painter, sculptor, composer, actor, director, designer, architect, jeweler, and lithographer.

DeGrazia also painted several series of exhibitions like the Papago Legends, Padre Kino, Cabeza de Vaca.

[citation needed] His parents, Salvador Domenico De Grazia and Lucia Gagliardi, were strong people who worked very hard for their family of seven children.

Because of the move to Italy, DeGrazia had forgotten how to speak English and as a result, he was put in first grade at the age of sixteen.

He played his trumpet at night, and landscaped at the University of Arizona during the day, in order to pay for his classes.

The two Mexican masters sponsored an exhibition of DeGrazia's paintings at the Palace of Fine Art in Mexico City during 1942.

Rivera wrote a letter to the United States government attempting to buy time for DeGrazia in order for him to complete his apprenticeship and keep him out of the military.

September 2, 1942 To Whom It May Concern: This will introduce Mr. DeGrazia of Arizona, a young artist of promising future who wishes to come to Mexico to study the technique of frescoes.

Diego Rivera[5]The two artists sponsored an exhibit of his paintings at Palacio de Bellas Artes in 1942, and DeGrazia was also featured in Mexico City's ''Hoy'' Magazine.

Witzeman gave him the freedom to paint whatever subject he wanted in a portion of the Old Main building located in the center of campus.

The artist strokes his brush on the wall about two stories tall and 15 feet wide until a mural begins to emerge.

"[6] His mural depicted "skulls topped with mortarboards peer(ing) at an open hand holding the flame of knowledge reaching out of a pile of books.

The figure holds the World in its right hand; from its shoulder hangs a long sheet simple titled "News."

In the far-left corner stand six skeletons donning graduating robes ... starving professors hang by their necks from the fingertips of a skeletal hand as the four horseman gallop over snakes slithering through books.

[8] The arts department at the university claimed they did not give permission for Witzeman and DeGrazia to paint the mural on campus property.

"[10] Part of DeGrazia's thesis included the 'Color Machine' which he built to measure the different levels of tone and pitch when music was being played.

In the archives at the DeGrazia Foundation, there are oral histories from some of the students who were given the Color Music Pattern Test.

DeGrazia did a series of abstract paintings based on the results of these psychological, audio, and visual experimental tests.

DeGrazia remembered well the criticism he received in those early days from people who thought his art wasn't any good.

On one occasion, DeGrazia was sitting in Rosita's Mexican restaurant (located next to his gallery) and a man walked in and shouted to him from across the room.

One year later, DeGrazia married Marion Sheret in a small chapel, deep in the jungles of Mexico.

Little by little, construction companies began to bulldoze the big saguaro cacti around him to build homes, businesses, and even a country club.

The DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun was finished being built in 1965, and with the aid of Yaqui and Tohono O'odham friends.

NBC studios recorded a newsreel, called 'Watch the World,' where they filmed DeGrazia and Marion making these ceramics.

"[11] "The only time for relaxation away from the studio was on the trail in the Superstition Mountains, while prospecting for gold, or with the Indians in Arizona and Mexico.

"[11] Some of his more famous friends included Lee Garmes, Vincent Price, Iron Eyes Cody, Namara Traviata, Alan Hale, Jr., Navajo artists Harrison and Robert Chee, Lee Marvin, Thomas Hart Benton, Olaf Wieghorst, Sammi Smith, Jack Van Ryder, Pete Martinez, Ross Santee, and Broderick Crawford of the t.v.

UNICEF requested permission to use his image of Los Ninos, an oil painting, to produce greeting cards.

The artist claimed the U.S. Internal Revenue Service rulings made him "a millionaire on paper, but my heirs will have to pay taxes for which there is no money."

In his well-publicized protest, DeGrazia rode horseback into the Superstition Mountains and burned about 100 of his paintings, an estimated worth of 1.5 million dollars at the time.

[12] The only way for DeGrazia to avoid this huge government taxation was for him to make his Gallery In the Sun a non-profit foundation.