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<\/div><\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n<\/div>[\/et_pb_code][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section admin_label=”section” fullwidth=”off” specialty=”off” inner_shadow=”off” parallax=”on” transparent_background=”off” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax_method=”off” padding_mobile=”off” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” make_equal=”off” use_custom_gutter=”off” background_color=”#5e4f48″ background_image=”http:\/\/www.antoniocorbo.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Infinito-rosso.jpg”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”on” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”on” padding_mobile=”off” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”on” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”on” parallax_3=”off” parallax_method_3=”off” parallax_4=”off” parallax_method_4=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on” background_color_2=”#000000″ custom_padding=”0px|0px|0px|0px” background_color_1=”#000000″ padding_top_1=”10px” padding_right_1=”10px” padding_bottom_1=”10px” padding_left_1=”10px” custom_width_px=”960px” gutter_width=”2″ padding_top_2=”10px” padding_right_2=”10px” padding_bottom_2=”10px” padding_left_2=”10px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”It sometimes happens” background_layout=”dark” text_orientation=”left” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” custom_margin=”|3px||3px” text_text_color=”#dbdbdb” text_font_size=”16″]<\/p>\nIt sometimes happens<\/h3>\n
that, outside of the familiar cradle of friendship, enriched with fine food and cosiness, a surprise emerges, from over the hills or out of the blue; something which had been modestly hidden, but which burns as the craze of a smouldering fire. This happened to me in the friendship with Antonio Corbo, between a smile and a handshake.
\nThe consistent series of works (intimately linked by a thin thread that seems to vanish in the course of time) that I became acquainted with through this discovery, evoked something familiar in me, familiar but also unknown, and that can be traced back to the past, to crucial moments in the history of twentieth-century art: Kate Kollwitz, Egon Schiele, Emil Nolde and Paul Klee, Kupka, and \u2013 which is only apparently surprising \u2013 to Giulio Paolini.<\/p>\n
The tendence of a historian to draw comparisons, to find analogies, references, interpretations and recurring topics \u2013 consciously or not from the part of the artists \u2013 may appear artificial or excessively determining, when one just attempts to sketch some critical line, but it nonetheless opens a way to measure the depth and potentialities of a possible research.
\n\u201cThree faces looking at us\u201d is the title of one of the drawings of Corbo\u2019s early production from the 1960s, and it is not the only one. Many anonymous but intriguing \u2018portraits\u2019 of a humilated mankind (by hunger, war or loneliness) ask for the attention of the beholder, or even for his compassion, and the setting back of indifference. And \u201cthey look at us\u201d with \u201cDesperation\u201d, \u201cFear and meekness\u201d, or even by showing explicitly \u201cThe horror of war\u201d, as other sharp and vigorous drawings from the first experimental period. Indeed, they look at us, nearly as did Giulio Paolini in 1967 \u2013 although with other \u201cconceptual\u201d and \u201cpoor\u201d intentions \u2013 when he presented the reproduction of a portrait by Lorenzo Lotto dated 1505, a painting where a young woman is fixing the beholder (or the artist himself) and which refers, as has been suggested, \u201cto an old conversation t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate in which both the painter and his partner are vanished.<\/p>\n
But the beholder always remains, without any limit.\u201d In fact the model does not accept \u201cin front of the artist her motionless position and is being \u2018looked\u2019 at by an active beholder.\u201d (Mirolla, 2002) During these same years, however, Corbo was active in the trade unions, socially and politically engaged, and thus the concrete \u2018presence\u2019 of suffering overwhelmed any possible conceptual framework. A \u201cuniversal grief\u201d maybe \u2013 as has been hypothesized in a discussion of the early work of the painter, then active in collective exhibitions, which (organized mostly for the end of benefit) may be viewed as \u201clarger communities\u201d \u2013 that transcends the here and now, but which does not stop to denounce sorrow and suffering, sometimes caused by natural disasters, but for the most due to political and historical abuse.
\nIn the 1960s and 1970s Cobo concentrates on expressionistic drawings and graphics, among which a large series of posters. But above all he discovers the landscape, working intensively on it till the 1990s. Gradually, the graphic signs are limited to purely figurative elements and painting presents itself, in audacious perspectives and effects, and in imaginary transfigurations.
\n\u201cThe cry of sorrow has penetrated the rock\u201d, he wrote in one of his poems, an discipline in which Corbo, in addition to drawings, paintings and aquarelles, is testing his own sensibility. And \u201cthreads of intense life and threads of broken lifes\u201d are interwoven with the lines of \u201cfields under the sky\u201d, an encounter of literature and painting. Van Gogh was a painter and a writer, deliberatedly crossing graphic sign and painting, because he was convinced \u2013 as he stated \u2013 that both are equally \u201cinteresting\u201d and \u201cdifficult.\u201d A conviction, as is well known, that he shared with many twentieth-century artists. A coincidence of dreaming, hope, expectations, and prayer.
\nThe presence of some paintings from the 1990s in this exhibition by Antonio Corbo allows us to connect the \u201cthreads\u201d and \u201clines\u201d of an early period with the present works, although in a radically changed context of research. The names of Nolde and Klee, that I mentioned at the outset, are again usefull for letting emerge inconscious references, far echoes. Looking at \u201cSunrise\u201d (1992) and \u201cMarshes\u201d (2009), the beholder perceives a subtile intermingling of colours and lines articulated by overlaps, series, palimpsests, by impressions and recollections, from which whirlpools emerge, as well the need of order and rationalisation. Yet, \u201cConnection\u201d and \u201cPhotograms\u201d, which date back to the production of the first years of this century, just like \u201cGreen trees\u201d an \u201cBlue tress\u201d, are strictly linked to earlier works. But something new emerges and forces its way, that is, the matter on the sheet, unbound and autonomous, accompanied by the clefts that it traces in its own course. The green and blue trees arise by the filtering flowering of the colour which runs on the surface and assumes its form, like grains of matter that develop intertwined either in whirlwinds, or in effusive golden and silver geometric lanes, ventilating a new interest of the painter, on which he concentrates now, that is, the origin of the universe and of the several forms of life. A return to the origin of things that puts to the test figurative representation, sometimes nullifying the latter, and that, in a totally informal way, entrusts itself to matter and to signs, in their surprising autonomy.
\nThus, shape is no longer a point of departure, but a result, a discovery, like in \u201cHorse\u201d, where the subject assumes form due to and as a consequence of the course of the hand-guided absorbing of colour by the sheet. Often the figurative, natural reference \u2013 which apparently never vanishes from Corbo\u2019s frame of thought \u2013 is mainly present in the title. Perhaps the forms of the painting \u201care again looking at us\u201d, and, as beholders we are invited to reflect on their right of existence, through several references and connections. By way of conclusion, I seem to hear the verses of one of his poems, dedicated to \u201cThe Verb\u201d, where he implores, almost like in a prayer: \u201cUse me, create me, batter me in the use. But always compose with me . . . .\u201d<\/p>\n
Gaia Salvatori<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section admin_label=”Sezione” fullwidth=”off” specialty=”off” background_image=”http:\/\/www.antoniocorbo.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Infinito-rosso.jpg” transparent_background=”off” background_color=”#ffffff” allow_player_pause=”off” inner_shadow=”off” parallax=”on” parallax_method=”off” padding_mobile=”off” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” make_equal=”off” use_custom_gutter=”off”][et_pb_row admin_label=”Riga” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”on” width_unit=”on” custom_width_px=”960px” use_custom_gutter=”off” padding_mobile=”off” background_color=”#404040″ allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” padding_top_1=”10px” padding_right_1=”10px” padding_bottom_1=”10px” padding_left_1=”10px” column_padding_mobile=”on”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Silvia eng” background_layout=”dark” text_orientation=”justified” text_font_size=”16″ use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” text_text_color=”#ededed”]<\/p>\n
Silvia Valente<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n When you observe Antonio Corbo \u2019s painting in its totality, you cross a creative flow in continuous and incessant movement, an emotional journey marked by a dense and engaging visual intuition of an artist able to renew and regenerate without breaks, offering a gallery of pictorial evolving images. A strong sense of contemporary, therefore, is the leitmotif of his painting, whose roots lie consciously in a constant and stubborn research into the culture of his time, distinctive elements of a strong avant-garde attitude that is able, therefore, first to retain and then to communicate, the evolutionary traits of the visual arts. His creative path appears underpinned by expressively eloquent moments, instants of dilated artistic ontological thought in continuous transformation, following the lead of perennial experiences, visions and research that lead to the experimentation of new materials and of painting techniques. Its production is marked – albeit with fluidity – by the combination visions \/ thematic and by recognizable stylistic features that cut through borders deep inside his personal creative development. From the beginning to the last phase of his artistic development, Antonio Corbo translates the reality through investigation, intimate and emotional, of newer and newer iconographic and conceptual assets: from the figure to the landscape, from the works of strong religious connotation to the still lives, from the politic thoughts to the conceptual items, up to the poetry. His artistic research frequently draws inspiration from the surveys conducted in the contemporary field of culture; a process full of reflections, listening and questions translated by the author with method and planning. The intimate sphere has affected the production of paintings from the beginning of his career and this aspect, after many years, has never been overlooked by the artist in view of the changed stylistic approaches.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/div><\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n<\/div> It sometimes happens that, outside of the familiar cradle of friendship, enriched with fine food and cosiness, a surprise emerges, from over the hills or out of the blue; something which had been modestly hidden, but which burns as the craze of a smouldering fire. This happened to me in the friendship with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2265","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antoniocorbo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antoniocorbo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antoniocorbo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antoniocorbo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antoniocorbo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antoniocorbo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antoniocorbo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}