The only true measure of an artist is his growth.

I first met Gambino the painter in Venice in 1958 and was immediately struck by the innocent power of his art. Whether he was painting the ageless buildings of his adopted city or isolating for sympathetic scrutiny a young girl in a blue skirt, there was an understanding eye here, and a skilled hand, and a keen intelligence, and a fresh imagination. My wife and I were privileged in those few brief days to meet Gambino the man as well, and I was not surprised to discover a warm and intensely alive human being, concerned, restless, eager to work—and eager to grow.

Well, you say « Non dimentica », and board the motoscafo, and your airplane takes you back to New York City, and Venice is very far away. And though you correspond for a little while ,you eventually learn that your Italian and Gambino’s English are not really good enough to permit a flow of ideas, and so the letters stop. Your memories of Gambino are restricted to the two canvases that hang on your living room wall. And then, nine years later, you find yourself once again in Venice, and of course there is a showing of Gambino’s work, and you walk into the gallery to ask the blond attendant where you can find Pino, explaining that you are an old friend. He arrives at the gallery within ten minutes. There is a moment’s hesitation as he recalls your face, and then time stops, it is 1958 again—but there are differences.

The differences are in the man and in his work. The differences are staggering. Where in 1958 there was promise, in 1967 there is realization. Where in 1958 there was emerging talent, in 1967 there is a full mastery of that talent. The palette that was strong then has become overwhelmingly powerful, the paintings glow with the intensity of discovered secrets. There is the same sense of composition, the same infallible eye for what is pertinent, the same freshly imaginative attitude but these are supplemented now by a personal vigor that comes from the man himself. There are, after all, no mysteries in art; the man is the work, and the work is the man. Gambino the man has grown enormously over the years, and we are fortunate indeed that he has been able to translate this growth onto canvas, and share with us his uniquely magnificent view of life, a view that extends far beyond the watery boundaries of Venice. Gambino now touches the mind and the heart—and these are both uncharted vastnesses that only the true artist can reach.

Evan Hunter

from the book GAMBINO

edizioni della galleria d’arte “il traghetto” – venezia