Nik Spatari - Wild Boar Hunting

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 also 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. In Nik Spatari's painting, abstract and figurative blend almost seamlessly: everything is transfigured into an extremely experimental language, always striving for strong expressiveness.

As we can see from this work, Nik Spatari's starting point is tangible reality, leaving a clearly visible trace in the work. In this case, an archaic hunting scene suggests to the artist a study of human and animal anatomy. This allows Spatari to modulate the characters' positions in a theatrical and suggestive manner, engaging the viewer in the construction of a dynamic space. Spatari's experimental approach, however, is expressed primarily formally; indeed, his language reflects various aesthetic influences of contemporary art. First and foremost, the expressionist synthesis of the subjects, stripped to the essential by a nervous style that simplifies their forms with a frenetic rhythm. In terms of color, the artist draws on an almost exaggerated gesturality, dictated by his almost uncontainable creativity. Finally, from a chromatic perspective, Nik Spatari favors a palette consistent with the expressionism of his style: the colors are electric and acidic, almost pop in their provocation.

Nicodemo Spatari, known as Nik (Mammola, 1929 – 2020), was an Italian painter, sculptor, and architect, a member of the deaf community. Throughout his career as a painter and sculptor, Spatari created numerous works in places of worship in Calabria, including the stained glass windows, frescoes, and the mosaic on the altar of the Church of the Monastery of San Domenico in Reggio Calabria. At the age of nine, he won the Rome-Tokyo-Berlin Axis International Painting Prize. Due to a trauma suffered in 1940, he lost his hearing and was forced to become self-taught, developing his skills in sculpture and architecture as well, starting from an immediate engagement with materials. During the 1950s and 1960s, he traveled throughout Europe. In 1958, he exhibited at the Venice Biennale. In the late 1950s, he settled in Lausanne, where he developed prismatic art. In his later years, he returned to his hometown of Mammola, intent on working on his own project: the creation of a contemporary art museum-workshop. Beginning in 1969, the Santa Barbara Museum Park was built in Mammola, on the ruins of a Basilian monastery on the Torbido River.

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