Gaetano Grillo - A Tribute to a Great Man

In the history of art, a clear distinction can often be made between figurative and abstract stylistic movements. However, when an artist's goal is to depict an object that resonates with phenomenal reality but is simultaneously charged with hidden and symbolic meaning, this boundary can become blurred. Symbolism and Expressionism are emblematic stylistic movements in their conceptual interpretation of reality, with an iconic rendering of images and a symbolic interpretation in the use of color. This work is part of Gaetano Grillo's pictorial production from the 1970s. In the paintings of that period, abstract and figurative art blend almost seamlessly, and this painter's preferred subjects are highly sought-after, drawing on a quotationism that draws on images from the past or from his own autobiographical experience. Everything, however, is transfigured into an extremely experimental language, always striving for strong expressiveness.

As Gaetano Grillo himself states, in the early 1970s he abandoned performative interventions to begin painting or repainting history with oil paintings on canvas, in the tradition of "painting," but looking at history and taking from it shreds, fragments of identity, to reassemble them in a different order. The work in question is exemplary of this phase of the Molfetta-born artist's work. The composition is built on a strong citationist component, drawing images from a virtual gallery nourished by the collective imagination (history and art) or the painter's individual and biographical imagery. Everything, however, is recontextualized by the juxtaposition of alienating, abstract, geometric, or figurative elements that recompose history according to the artist's sensibility, even with a certain dose of Dadaist irony (especially in the titles). Formally, too, the quality is highly elaborate: the images are lean, linear, interpreted almost in an illustration-like style, yet with the technical prowess of a great painter. Indeed, the application of color is still vibrant and vibrant, within a very balanced chromatic context. This work showcases Grillo's ironic streak in presenting, in a piece titled "Homage to a Great Person," his self-portrait crowned with laurel wreaths and the word "PAX" written on his forehead. The rest of the composition unfolds in the usual mix of alienating and disparate elements (the chairs and the abstract vegetation almost blend together).

Gaetano Grillo was born in Molfetta in 1952. He trained at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan at Alik Cavaliere's School of Sculpture, where new artistic languages ​​were being experimented with in the early 1970s. He made his debut at a very young age with performances, but already in 1976 he titled his first solo exhibition at the Galleria Solferino in Milan "I Am Happy When I Paint!". In the 1990s, Grillo became very interested in Egyptian hieroglyphics; he began painting his first "palimpsests" and developing a cryptographic alphabet containing all the letters the artist collected from every era and culture. This unique alphabet would become one of the key characteristics of his work. He has held several solo exhibitions in important European galleries and museums; he has participated in the Rome Quadrennial and the Biennials of Milan, Venice, and Medellin. Along with Bonami, Arcangelo, Natà, and Rotelli, he was part of the Stazione Centrale group, which formed at Studio Cannaviello in Milan in 1985. He teaches painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where he is also the Director of the School of Painting. He founded and edits the magazine Academy of Fine Arts, an artistic and editorial project that for the first time reconnects the Italian academic world with the world of contemporary art.

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