Drawings Section
INTRO
“Gaunt, scraggy drawings with black bold signs in which a humble humanity appears as unclothed and almost without flesh” – these words of Guido Perocco clearly express realistic violence and a young, uncertain grotesque style.
[… These early drawings] are soon and definitely replaced by a dominant combination of sign and colour. We notice a premature itinerary towards the overcoming of the drawing as a preparatory exercise, while orienting it to schematic settings in which “structures” […] marked by a “supporting”, violent line are proposed; a style that is already characterized by a double or triple chromatic line and indifference to the surface coverage, left empty, with big blank pauses.
Here, then, the style of Gambino gets unexpectedly complicated, corroborating itself with new elements that enrich the overall image, thanks to the emerging of unexpected and sometimes even surprising facets. […] on this occasion some questions about the role of the “drawing” as a key player in the creation of figures in the postwar period (painting, sculpture, architecture, but also design and advertising, etc.) are again proposed, and partly dissolved.
First steps, anticipations, reconsiderations, dead-ends, suspended insights, illuminations, interrupted paths are not lacking in the graphic itinerary of the Sicilian artist. It is an alternating itinerary, sometime a real alternative one, of painting and drawing. Thus, some graphic works are strictly preparatory or propaedeutic to the paintings; others “escape”, go further than the real pictorial work, moving towards a not-yet explored zone; while others remain in the range of the decoration or succumb to the impetus of a charming play between lines and colours.
One wonders to what extent the experiments of the “drawing”, so agile and free, have then reached the second and more “informal” stage of his painting; to what extent the drawer matters on the painter and vice versa.
[* Guido Perocco]
Nico Stringa
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