artworks

Luisa Ferida
180 x 180 cm.
n. 13		 Mai senza trucco
120 x 100 cm.
n. 12		 Die Modelinie in Deutschland
80x60 cm
n. 11		 Die Letzten Tage
100x80 cm
n. 10
Einer von Mnner im Kampf gegen den Bolschewismus
80x60 cm
n. 9		 La neve a Venezia
180x180 cm
n. 8		 Krieg und Kunst
80x60 cm
n. 7		 Nach dem Osten
80x60 cm
n. 6
Nos amour en beton
200x145 cm
n. 5		 Sowjetrusse Frau
80x60 cm
n. 4		 Trugbild Panzer
140x190 cm
n. 3		 Des Marchens anfang
80x60 cm
n. 2
e la collera degli uomini
100x80 cm.
n. 1

 

 

Biography   inizio pagina

Born in Turin in 1949, Montesano studied in the city at the Valdocco Salesian seminary. He did not follow up an ecclesiastic vocation for he felt more strongly his artistic and intellectual inclinations, which led him in the Seventies first to Bologna and then to Paris where, amongst others, he was able to meet Gilles Deleuze and Jean Baudrillard.

Montesano’s initiation into painting had taken place much earlier, when he was still a seminarian at Valdocco. This is what led to the title, Andarera – a sort of “À rebours”, a trip back into the places of memory and childhood.
In the early Seventies his first works were in fact reproductions of Madonnas and holy images, souvenirs handed out to the faithful in sanctuaries and during spiritual exercises. Montesano enlarged them and revisited them in a post-modern style, going back to the fine tradition of popular painting but also applying conceptual and theoretical meanings.

He devoted a number of paintings to Turin and to the memory of his father, who worked as an “eccentric” in the world of variety shows: the 1989 painting of Torino anno zero, with the artist as a child out for a walk holding his father’s hand, is emblematic. From the late Eighties until the end of the Nineties, Montesano was included in what is referred to as Medialismo, a current of pictorial revival with a neo-pop and comic-strip basis, of which in actual fact he was an absolute precursor.

He was quite distinct from this context, however, for in his investigations of history in the past, Montesano reinterpreted the crucial and dramatic years of the formation of Europe during the twentieth century, right up to the moment of its crisis. Together with these, there are also the most tender pictures of children, captivating female portraits, vast romantic-style landscapes, and cinema-like cityscapes that Montesano painted with his unmistakable neorealist, or rather post-realist style.

As well as being a well-established painter, Montesano is also an avid stage director. His Compagnia Florian, based in Pescara, has put on shows in Paris, Hungary and throughout Italy.
In 2002 Montesano achieved great success with a group exhibition at the Boxart Gallery in Verona with works on the theme of the seven deadly sins.

inizio pagina

26371
Boxart - Art Gallery - via dei Mutilati, 7/a - 37122 Verona ITALY
Tel.(+39) 045 8000176 - email: - P.Iva 02601700236