NAPLES
24 September – 7 November 2020
After a long period of forced closure due to the Covid-19 and the summer break, the Galleria Andrea Ingenito Contemporary Art in Naples, starts with the exhibition entitled “Windows anthropic”. Personal exhibition dedicated to the artist of Neapolitan origin Federico Lombardo (who will be present at the Vernissage), open from 24 September to 7 November 2020.
Federico Lombardo, an artist with a multifaceted soul, synthesizes, blends and reworks in his paintings the aspects of realistic culture of the mid-nineteenth century.
His research is based on the interpretation of the urgencies of his time, evolving a thought that has a solid foundation in history, but projected into the future. The exhibition will show about twenty works, including oils and watercolors, made by the artist between 2018 and 2020. The exhibition, curated by Andrea Ingenito, aims to underline the duplicity of the artist who from en plein air spaces, in the wake of the French impressionist vision, to familiar places, portrays scenes of daily life and fragments of reality; a medium to express and investigate in the most congenial and simple way. The face, the human being, in its social or symbolic context are its subjects, also interpreted through dichotomous techniques, such as digital painting as an immaterial expression of the human essence and the traditional one that opens potential “anthropic windows”. A compositional versatility that finds reason to be in the Renaissance majesty of an ancient Rome and in the glimpses of his native city, Naples; all places dear to him, in which he expresses all his love for his Italy and in particular for his land, of which a clear example are the two canvases “the Coronation of Positano”, “the Window of Marechiaro”, “Piazza Bellini” and “The girl of Piazza Dante”. The intention of the curator is to highlight ambivalent aspects of an eclectic artist like Federico Lombardo, to whom he chooses to dedicate a solo exhibition, after the Milanese collective of 2014. This time, Andrea Ingenito’s research goes beyond purely existential investigation, choosing to pay particular attention to the complexity of his art based on the complete and absolute vision of the real and the clear return to traditional painting and figurative art. An essential and well recognizable style, with a purely realistic mould. Movement that was born in France in 1840 and that revolutionizes art forever, manifesting that avant-garde desire to merge humanity and life on the canvas. This atmospheric research by Federico Lombardo, linked to a landscape realism and interest in the themes of modern life, finds faith in the works of Giuseppe De Nittis, one of the greatest representatives of the impressionist-style realistic culture. In addition, his way of representing social realism in the communicative network highlights in his painting a clear reference to the Sicilian artist Renato Guttuso and his founding idea of painting and collective epos, (an artist who has already been the subject of study and research for the curator Ingenito, in the exhibition “Renato Guttuso. South and Passion” last year). A communicative network in which he focuses the major representations of portraits on a background with a strong narrative style, conforming to the magical realism of Edward Hopper, whose subjects are recognizable, the images contextualized and immobilized in space. Solitary human figures or in the crowd, in enclosed spaces, whose settings full of emotional force, recall the artist Alberto Sughi. An art full of bright and warm colors, able to illuminate and envelop as in a work of David Hockney. In Federico Lombardo’s paintings, it seems that something is always going to happen, even when nothing happens. The everyday life in his paintings is touching, visible to the human eye and perceptible from the unconscious. It is the portrait of a colorful Italy, in particular of its South, made of lights and wonderful views, of the streets full of people and of the domestic interiors where the characters speak in silence as if they had the voice to do it. The artist is the spokesman of a truth that bursts brutally on the canvas. A truth that stands before the eyes of all, true life, ordinary, yet solemn in its charge of humanity.
