Visionary Art > Blog > Painting Spotlight > 4 Living Italian Painters straddling Contemporary and Tradition
4 Living Italian Painters straddling Contemporary and Tradition
Contributed by Daniel Mirante on July 28, 2021
Italy is a culture rich and ancient and the origin of many of the worlds most revered paintings. Because of this power of history and tradition, it is home to painters who continue time-tested craft approaches, and whom skillfully weave together the prevailing contemporary zeitgeist with traditional symbolism.
Roberto Ferri was born in Taranto in 1978. In 1996, he graduated from the "Lisippo" artistic high school in Taranto. He begins to study painting as a self-taught and, moving to Rome in 1999, deepens his research on ancient painting, from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century; in particular, he devoted himself to Caravaggesque and academic painting (David, Ingres, Girodet, Géricault, Gleyre, Bouguereau, etc). In 2006, he graduated with 110 cum laude from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, set design course. https://www.robertoferri.net/
"IL BACIO" tempera grassa su tela 105 x 105 cm. Roberto Ferri.
TRACCE DI DIO. 120 x 100 cm. 2017. Roberto Ferri
Nicola Samorì
Nicola Samorì was born in 1977 in Forlì and graduated in 2004 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna.
Samori's work is a conversation with the past history of art in Italy, and themes of religious fervor and annihilation, where intentional and skillfully weilded 'destruction' applied to the perfection of the classically painted image, conjouring morbid psychological spaces and transcendental metaphysical abstraction. https://www.nicolasamori.it/
Nicola Samorì, Lieto Fine di un Martire, 2015
Particular of Samorì is a final artistic gesture: "I raised a single filament of color, circling the repainted black head to reach the grip of the index and thumb that held a ring in an ancient image. The portrait has become a circle ".
Nicola Samori – 'In the Beginning was the end' – Oil on canvas 2016
Peculiare di Samorì è il gesto artistico finale: "Ho sollevato col bulino un singolo filamento di colore, circuendo la testa ridipinta di nero per raggiungere la stretta di indice e pollice che in un'immagine antica reggevano un anello. Il ritratto si è fatto cerchio". Nicola Samorì, In principio era la fine. Olio su tavola, 40×30 cm, 2016
Ciclope, 2020 by Nicola Samori
Agostino Arrivabene
Agostino Arrivabene was born at Rivolta d'Adda, near Cremona, Italy on June 11, 1967. After graduating in 1991 at the Brera Art Academy in 1991, he focused on painting, drawing and etching. http://www.agostinoarrivabene.it/
Il rizoma di Pugin 2, Agostino Arrivabene 2016
"I enhance what is urgent inside me. Sometimes I translate what my essence demands into dim atmospheres. I raise universal human values to images, or symbols, or, even better, archetypes that transfigure reality through a language bound to ancient mysteries, such as the Eleusinian Mysteries…"
La visione di Iren. Agostino Arrivabene. 2011
Extensive travel in Europe's museums gave Arrivabene first hand appreciation of masterpieces from which he made master studies. This research allowed him to revitalise and apply forgotten painting techniques (above all egg tempera), to utilise neglected materials and to prepare colours according to traditional methods.
Ctesia Panax by Agostino Arrivabene 2012
Adriano Fida
Adriano Fida was born in Reggio Calabria in '78. He lives and works in Rome. Trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Reggio Calabria – in which he matured his personal artistic research born through the study of the great masters of the past -, Fida refined his stylistic code in Turin with the fresco technique, under the guidance by the master Silvano Gilardi. https://www.adrianofida.com/
La Madre degli Angeli in studio by Adrian Ofida
L'occhio dell'Angelo' by Adrian Ofida, oil on canvas, 58,5×84,5, 2019
Daniel Mirante
Daniel Mirante is a painter, historian, scholar, teacher and writer.
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