Born in Bracigliano, near Salerno, Italy, Painter, muralist and printmaker Umberto Romano came to the United States at the age of 9 with his parents and grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. He enrolled at the National Academy of Design in New York and subsequently won a Pulitzer traveling scholarship that enabled him to tour and study European museums and to attend the American Academy in Rome. Upon his return, Romano settled in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he established the Romano School of Art and held summer classes for many years thereafter. During the 1930s, he also worked for the WPA Federal Arts Project and created, among other such projects, a six-panel mural at the Springfield Massachusetts Post Office. He moved to New York and taught at the National Academy of Design from 1968 to 1978.
Romano, who received many awards and prizes, had more than 70 one-man shows. His work is at such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University and the Corcoran Gallery and Smithsonian Institution in Washington. He died at New York.