Exhibition Opening – October 18, at 7PM
ON VIEW: By appt. (Mon-Fri:10am-12/2pm-4pm), Reservations at iicwashington@esteri.it
Introduction by David Gariff, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
Musical performance by Duff Davis, guitar & Herbert Scott, saxophone.
EXHIBIT:
October 18 – November 18, 2012
Around the imposing Grande Onda, a triumphant black wave (137”x1200”) which invades a whole wall, the abstract yet warmly colored Fragments and the complex Cancellations offer a fair introduction into the world of one of the most interesting Italian painters of the last fifty years. Franco Sarnari’s painting sets up a close dialogue with the old masters, but always focuses on the tensions, fears and hopes, joyful bliss and terrible anxiety of our time.
RSVP
Please click on “Make a Reservation” by October 18, 2012 at 2 PM
The Reservation System will allow you to register until we reach
capacity or by the event’s date at 2:00 PM (whichever comes
first.)
RESERVATION IS REQUIRED FOR OUR EVENTS FOR SECURITY REASONS. A RESERVATION IS NOT A GUARANTEE OF A SEAT. OUR VENUE HAS LIMITED SEATING AND WE WILL ACCOMODATE GUESTS ON A FIRST-COME FIRST-SERVED BASIS.
PHOTO ID REQUIRED
LOCATION:
Embassy of Italy/Italian Cultural Institute
Auditorium
3000 Whitehaven st Street NW
Washington, DC 20008
FRANCO SARNARI
Born in Rome in 1933, Franco Sarnari demonstrates an extraordinary artistic talent already in his early years, drawing giant paintings on the ground with lumps of coal. He is entirely self-taught with no formal art training background. Between 1954 and 1957 he attends a course in advertising, but never completes it. He meets Piero Guccione, who will become one of his greatest friends and an important source of artistic inspiration. Sarnari’s works, indeed, have always been marked both by his direct experiences with other contemporary artists and by the works of the masters of the past.
The lively artistic debate between abstractionism and realism during Sarnari’s youth has a big influence on his production, and his first paintings are based on a generic expressionism.
In 1964 he founds “Il Girasole” in Rome. The aim of this group is to provide a third benchmark for local artists, with different artistic influences from the pre-existing “Tartaruga” and “Il pro e il contro” groups. Through Mario Schifano, Sarnari has his first approach with Pop Art, as shown in his paintings from the 60’s.
Sarnari’s first exhibition is held at Libreria Internazionale Terzo Mondo in Rome in March 1965. Five years later, in 1970, he reaches an important milestone in his career with the painting Il mare si muove.
In 1971 he moves to Sicily and founds, the so called “Gruppo di Scicli” together with Piero Guccione and other artists. In the following years he travels extensively throughout Europe and America.
During this time he almost stops painting because, as he says, “a sort of emptiness, a sense of impotence and the feeling of not being able to paint anymore” are prevailing. He prefers sketching, and Ingres becomes an important point of reference.
This crisis overcome, in the early 70’s Sarnari begins the series called Frammenti (Fragments), which will be the main subject of his research until 1980-81. With this group of paintings Sarnari puts an end to his artistic “prehistory”, as it was defined by Lorenza Trucchi in a book dedicated to the painter in 1982. These paintings are divided in “open fragments”, where it is still possible to see some space above the portrayed object, and “closed fragments”, where the object is zoomed on so closely that it is not possible to recognize it anymore.
Between 1985 and 1986 Sarnari creates the Controluce (Backlight) paintings, a series “dedicated to Monet and Pollock”.
In 1987-89, a new series called Cancellazioni (Erasures) sees the light. In these paintings, he deals with masterworks from the far and recent past, such as Piero della Francesca’s Flagellation, with the technique “in levando”, that is, taking away, creating clearances and gaps on the surface of perfection. The first comprehensive show of the Cancellazioni takes place at Villa Foscarini-Rossi in Stra (Venice) in 1997.
In 1989 he is invited to teach an art class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Catania.
A new series of paintings, the Maggi (Mays), is created in the years 2002-2003. This series has as its main object the yellow-daisy fields in the Sicilian countryside during Spring time. At the same time he begins working on a new version of the old project Sea/ Darkness/ Horizon: a fifty square meters new big Wave.
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