Robert Carroll - Highsummer

The work can be defined as a genre scene, that is, the depiction of an episode of everyday life that, apparently, lacks any significant element. These types of subjects were long considered minor and only began to spread in Western art starting in the 17th century. Only with the development of 19th-century realism did everyday subjects become considered as important as historical or religious ones. The Impressionists, in particular, favored subjects related to modern life in urban, bourgeois settings. More specifically, Robert Carroll's artistic production often focuses on an investigation, conducted along the lines of existentialism and the analysis of human relationships, of a bourgeois world, captured in the daily routine of its gestures and rituals.

Robert Carroll's pictorial language is not intended to be an objective representation of reality (whether a scene from everyday life or a landscape), but rather to draw out the expressive potential of that reality. For this reason, his style is closer to a Symbolist interpretation. Thus, compositionally, the drawing almost disappears, leaving room for the expressive potential of color. The application relies on a spot-based technique that energetically synthesizes sensory data, and the palette is charged with hues to enhance the scene's symbolic value. Every spatial-temporal law is overridden in the simultaneity of the representation, where elements overlap.

Robert Carroll was born in Painesville, Ohio, in 1934. He studied art at the Cleveland Institute of Art and Western Reserve University, where, in addition to winning several scholarships, he earned a degree in fine arts in 1957. During his military service, he alternated his studies in nuclear physics with the company of the most famous names of the Beat Generation, from Allen Ginsberg to Jack Kerouac. He befriended Willem De Kooning, one of the leading American exponents of abstract impressionism, who introduced him to the Italian cultural and artistic scene. At the age of 25, Carroll left America for Italy. Once in Rome, Carroll frequented the cultural scene, forging important relationships with figures such as Elio Vittorini and Salvatore Quasimodo. After countless solo exhibitions throughout Europe and America, in the mid-1980s Carroll shifted his attention to the creation of Multivisions—installations in which images and sounds intertwine—dedicated to major US natural parks, repeating the experience in Italy as well. Despite this, Carroll never lost sight of painting, which remained his primary activity, alongside the creation of important etchings.

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