Antonio Pugliese celebrates 50 years of activity at the Torrione

Art understood as nourishment for the soul has no age, but we humans, accustomed to dividing and cataloging, also give a measure to time. And the one employed by Maestro Antonio Pugliese did not pass in vain, feeding and lavishing Art. During the period of his long activity he distinguished himself particularly in schools, where he transmitted to thousands of students in addition to the academic notions on the history of art and the techniques for making drawings, paintings and sculptures, the love for art in general. We live in a country of Saints, Artists and Navigators where Beauty, although familiar to us, is sometimes neglected and the relationships intertwined on mere pecuniary interests prevail over the aesthetic aspects of well-being. Antonio, a well-known artist originally from Avellino, but for some years moved with his wife Antonella to the green island, shy and reserved, retains his boyish appearance and covers himself with Art, making it an emblem and giving us, for the occasion of the 50th anniversary of artistic activity, the sharing of his works that will be exhibited in the ancient anti-Saracen tower of Forio, also located in the “Giovanni Maltese” Civic Museum. Regarding the Torrione, we recall that the “Giotto” school of painting aimed at the islanders and conceived by Maestro Pugliese in synergy with the Radici association is active there.

Here is what the philosopher, critic and art historian, writer and ceramist Leo Strozzieri says of Antonio: An artistic research, that of Antonio Pugliese, always carried out with extreme logical rigor, even when, free from material constraints, he lets himself go to declinations informal with risky expressionistic and gestural openings with a strong emotional and visual impact. In my opinion, Antonio Pugliese’s painting is the result of the interaction between planning, whose primary source of reference is classical art, and modernity, understood as the energy and breadth of the most disparate linguistic elements. Undoubtedly the aniconism of the Avellino artist has an informal and therefore very significant anamnesis, for him it is the material, sign and energy aspect; however, not infrequently persuasive pieces of figuration emerge. These figurative fragments express at the root the author’s disposition towards those formal values ​​that are now very often disregarded by many of his adventure colleagues. Nonetheless, Pugliese’s linguistic conjugation remains extremely linked to the Neo-avant-gardes, but not so much for some stylistic features, well recognizable in his works, but rather for the underlying philosophy that effectively and radicitus becomes more and more consistent, especially in the most recent production, and which he summarized as follows: “Nothing is constant except change”. The Greek panta rei becomes a pictorial tool for interpreting supports, materials, colors and images in an ever-changing way; here, Pugliese’s painting is a revolutionary painting in this sense, since far from being noisy and dispersive according to contemporary mass-media canons, it is collected, medieval, almost San Franciscan.

The exercise of the sign, of color, of form is filled in an atmosphere of authentic spirituality, too often clandestine in many artists of the last generations. Therefore a talented painter from Puglia, who has been able to combine past and modernity, and equally available to that integral humanism without which the work of art will never be able to receive nourishment of the soul. The Radici Cultural Association, participant in the happy intuition of M ° Pugliese, thanks him for having chosen this magical place, where the tangible presence of Art, usable above all through the works that the English aquarellist Fanny Jane Fayrer, wife of the Maestro Giovanni, donated to the Forian community, shares its choices and invites the many and generous guests and all residents to attend the inauguration of the exhibition, Saturday 13 August 2022 at 9.30 pm or, alternatively, to visit the works on display until Sunday 28 from 18.00 to 22.30

Antonio Pugliese celebrates 50 years of activity at the Torrione