The colors of the Mediterranean

Eduardo, 1981 - Mixed technique on canvas - cm 60x80 - De Filippo Collection

To conduct him within the prophetic shakespearian walls was the love: He won the desk to the High school Artistic and he left, not without regrets, his beloved Naples, bringing himself in the heart and in the eyes its sun, magic light and sea, to tell us, then, on his canvas.
The first impact with Verona was not simple. " At school - he tells – at the beginning many my colleagues considered me a "terrone" that he had come to steal the place to the veronesi. But I also found many friends, unforgettable characters as the great Renzo Marinelli, that was near me and, a little at a time, managed to get involved in it. Today I am considered to all the effects a veronese artist. And it is strange: when I was in Naples, it worked "nemo propheta in country", for which was rather ignored there. Today, instead, that I am considered a veronese painter, also my city has opened to my art. My fortune is that I know how to wait and till now the things have always returned to me, giving results me that, perhaps, if I had asked, I would not have gotten."

- So many exhibitions, in all these years, that have brought your canvans in the world: United States, Brazil, Holland, Austria, France, Ireland and, recently, a true triumph in Singapore: you have the extraordinary faculty to adjust you to the atmospheres of the various places to which you go, also maintaining intact your colors, your emotions all Mediterranean.

I was born in Marechiaro, in a Roman villa where you dig potatoes and you found pieces of ancient bas-reliefs. My father had addressed me to the studies of engineering, but I preferred the academy: the art for me is an authentic vocation. And my inspiration is always fundamentally Mediterranean. I have elaborated various techniques to reproduce the different atmospheres, also those misty of the north, without abdicating the light to the colors that I bring within me from the childhood. For example, the whites' use,of the gold and silver leaves and, above all, of that alive chromatic universe, essential and solar that deeply belong to me.

- Here in Verona, after your first exhibition at Ghelfi Gallery, you have exposed twice at the Gallery of the Shield, at Maniscalchi Erizzo Building, on the occasion of the soccer World cup as soon as you were considered more veronese, and less Neapolitan, you are open more
roads, also in Italy, out of the scaliger wall. Naples, Camerino, Capri.- what in this your city of adoption. Is the "nemo propheta in country" which is repeated?

Charles Giuffre in the dresses of Felice Sciosciammocca, 2005 - Mixed technique on canvas - cm 50x70

I sure hope not. I’m waiting for an exhibition that should be here in Verona, organized by the Municipality. Meanwhile I was requesting another exhibition in Singapore, in a great government structure devoted to the arts. My technique to use the white in relief, with the tampons of the batique, then I scratch with a razor, creating the shades and giving a thickness to the color and a particular tonality that it becomes wealthy, then, of the brightness of the gold and the silvers, he has been very appreciated by Tan Kay Young president of the Polytechnic of Singapore, who had seen my works in Ireland. He has invited me for days in Singapore, where two things have struck me: the vegetation, that enchanting greens and the extraordinary availability of whom has welcomed me offering me a great lesson of kindness and artistic and cultural sensitivity.

- We still speak of your art, that has gone graphically simplifying itself - it is almost disappeared that " thread of Arianna" (what it tied with circular lights: strong colors and also conflicting) that it characterized your first works - it is advantage of a great technical and chromatic awareness, that enriches of it, to my notice, the poetic suggestion. And of your bond with Naples, that is also bond with Eduardo, which you have devoted a portrait, and to Charles Giuffrè, that you have also withdrawn.

The black and white portrait of Eduardo, which today his child Luca, preserve the original one, made him the last time that he came to perform in Verona at the Ristori Theatre in 1981. It was exposed in Rome at the exhibition devoted to the great Neapolitan playwright ten years after his death and it was published on the magazine La Repubblica. As for Charles Giuffrè, since we knew from the Artistic High school in Naples, we made the scenographies for his brother Aldo. I have given to Charles his picture from the "crazy persons' Physician" as homage to the Master that continues to it stuffed to enjoy the greatness of Eduardo and the great Neapolitan culture, because Naples, where I return thick, it is the strength that makes me go on and makes me feel good here too, among the Northern mists.

- One last question, on your masters, you'll feel more connected….

My masters have been the old Neapolitan landscapists, who as a young man, I accompanied them in car and we went to paint together. I am then always spellbound from Butters of which impassioned me the color and the material. Then Picasso, that I have discovered in more mature age and finally the gilded spaces of the art nouveau.

- Pippo Borrello, a simple authentic man, that has known to integrate without effort in the veronese reality filtering the mist of the north with the brightness of the light and the Mediterranean cromatismis.