LA DOLCE VITA

I initially discovered Luigi, who goes by ‘Gino’, when a catalog for his Milan exhibition arrived anonymously, ‘aero posta’. I saved it among the few that spark my interest. I found I couldn’t get the images out of my mind. By the time we followed up, the famed Italian dealer Marieschi had retired and closed his gallery. We tried tracking down the artist directly, reaching another dead end. An exhaustive search led to a one line mention of Gino’s name on the tenth page of a listing of group shows on an Italian language website. We learned that Gino was working with a dealer in Torino who informed us that the paintings had all been sold. Typically an artist of his caliber has no available work but, he said he would speak with Gino about possibly painting something new for our Gallery. Gino as it happens is uninterested in the commercial aspects of the art world. This is not what motivates him. Months went by. We weren’t sure if we would ever get a painting from him. I explained to the dealer, who was also our translator, about the details of our show and urged him to advise Gino that we thought his work was important and that he should seriously consider showing before an American viewing audience. Finally we received an email with an attachment of the painting he would be sending us.

We sold it immediately upon removing it from the crate. It was time I thought, for a visit to Torino. When I arrived there, Gino and his entourage could not have been more gracious. Gino lives and works in a classical Italian village, 30 kilometers outside of Torino called Chieri. A place that is informed but unaffected by the world around it. A village at peace with itself.

His studio is located above the factory building that houses his family’s packaging business. He has several rooms in which he works but what struck me most was his incredible library of rare art books and monographs. From the Renaissance to contemporary art. Hand bound books of etchings and stunning color reproductions. Encyclopedias of Italian masters. It was in this room that the essential history of art could be studied and examined. It seemed as though the influence of centuries of great painting had been distilled down to these magnificent still lifes that Gino had created.

It was in Chieri that I had with Gino and his family and friends one of the most unforgettable meals of my life. This particular region of northern Italy is well known for its white truffles – Brillat-Savarin, known as “the diamonds of the kitchen”. The waiter arrived with a wood box of a half dozen or so. We selected one and he proceeded to shave it onto everything – the salad, the prima pasta, the lamb. It was a festa tutto il giorno, an all day feast. And finally, the dessert. The pasticcini. Exactly like the ones in Gino’s paintings.

It is our hope that you will enjoy the paintings in this exhibition with the same enthusiasm with which they were painted. They are more than mere still lifes. They are metaphors for a way of life which is less and less apt to be familiar. A life without technology but with familia. Without information but with conversation. A life that is truly authentic. La dolce vita.

THE TEMPTATIONS OF LUIGI BENEDICENTI

“Beauty! Who knows what it is?” Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

Benedicenti’s paintings strike us for their remarkable dramatic zeal in their portrayal of enormous pastries. After his first exhibition in the 1970s and despite considerable public and critical acclaim, Benedicenti refused to show his work for a long time, yet continued his exploration and experimentation with new techniques and images. Only after the early 1990s did he start exhibiting again, finding his muse in a small Pasticceria in his home town of Chieri, Italy.

Today he paints pastries with raisins and candied fruit, plates with caramelized pears, olives in oil, and luscious fruit tarts on colorful backgrounds and sparkling aluminum foil. The world of nature and reality seems to be at his fingertips. Oil pigments and varnish are the artificial elements that Benedicenti uses to represent the earth, water and fruit. He starts from the drawing and the monochrome chiaroscuro pigments and then abandons himself to splendid color fantasies in which volume, light and transparency contribute to creating these theatrical works of art.

We may wonder why Luigi Benedicenti prefers extravagant cream puffs, melted caramel on fruit or transparent icing when exploring the transcendental reality of the still life painting. Yet, his canvases appear to be so saturated with nuances inclined to bring us back to the work of the early Photorealists and at the same time evoking the great Renaissance painters of his homeland. The principle truth in Benedicenti’s works lays somewhere between the poles of Flemish still life painting and contemporary photography. The truth celebrated by Benedicenti allows everyone to recognize in certain images, objects, or sometimes in the figures represented in his paintings, a certain constant which has the power and passion to evade time.

The play on reality is pushed to the extreme by Benedicenti to the point that the pictorial space seems three-dimensional, a strategy adopted by Baroque painters like Caravaggio. Caravaggio’s masterpiece, Canestra di Frutta (1597–1598), had particular importance because it bestowed a new meaning to the relationship between art and nature. Benedicenti has taken this relationship and translated it into the modern day still life via his own artistic style as is evident in the painting Twilight (2008) where he has replaced the Baroque woven basket with modern paper shells.

The clear indication of spatiality and stability represented by Caravaggio’s basket full of fruit lying in the middle of the canvas and slightly protruding in relation to the plane on which it was placed, leaves room for other elements such as the fruit and flourishing leaves. Benedicenti employs a similar strategy using the reflections in sparkling aluminum foil as a means to unveiling otherwise hidden elements. Firmly grounded to specific image references, Benedicenti’s paintings are not only full of meaningful interactions and relationships, but represent renewed interest in contemporary still life painting.

Luciana Baldrighi