The manner of Pio Santini - [21/08/05 by piosantini]
By ANNE BRANDEBOURG, art critic.
THE PAINTER FACING HISTORY
After 1945, the predominating taste changed and the legitimacy of naturalist figuration is a debatable point. The 60’s triumphing language tended more towards Pop Art, opposite to Santini’s pictorial universe. Modernity, in a cyclical break with tradition, wanted then to be synonymous with progress and provocation. These concepts nourished the uncompromising avant-garde ideology. On the other hand, Santini was in keeping with the figurative tradition –then so disparaged - with courage and modesty. During this unsettled artistic period the painter started to exhibit in Paris, Rome and Milan.
Little by little, the Parisian galleries were opening up for him, reputation took shape, thanks to the great prizes he won during Parisian official Exhibitions, among which the prestigious Great Prize of the French Artists (1970). Although he had committed himself in the great figurative tradition of classical style, in a time when it was out of fashion, Pio Santini’s work is still ignored by general public.
QUIET LIFE
Santini’s favourite subjects have some of the characteristics of
such simple and traditional categories as portrait, still life,
landscape... What renews them is the manner of Santini, a direct and
intimate view, an intense and grave approach which shows a reflection
on the human being mystery and the quiet life of objects. The painter
tries to express the world more than to express him. He gives us an
inkling of beauty in the Jug, Children playing, Fabien, Marina,
Quatuor, Girl with the swing...
The jug, children playing,
Fabien, Marina,
Quatuor,
Girl with a swing... Pio Santini’s painting is filled with the same intensity, and the same respectful attention to the subject, however modest it may be: the English Teapot, Peonies, Still life with an opaline...
The English teapot
The material is beautiful and sensual, the touch is perceptible and both are part of Pio Santini’s power in painting, just like the strong and contrasted colours producing a right sound
like in “The bass player”, and a climate full of nobility such as in “My Parents”. The range of colours used by the painter can get softer and more limpid for the benefit of a fair light in which happiness is immobilized:
the Family Boat, a childhood memory. Or this other canvas looking like a Monet in Giverny, representing another Boat which slips ideally in the light.
The memories deeply rooted in Italy, the walks in the Villa d’ Este, close to the large family house in the Cittadella, are delicately described with a hot and pink limpid light bathing
Tivoli landscape. Years after Le Lorrain and Corot, Santini, in his turn, expresses the plenitude of this Italy balanced by his style and the sunlight which give the painting space and greatness.
Then come the snapshot paintings. As you would steal pictures, the painter captures with a nervous touch the image of a family in” Fréjus”, or the one of a “yellow beach umbrella”, strangely centered on the canvas, pinned to the horizon in an impassive realism. Because of his ability to fix his feelings in a rare and apt sensitivity, Santini seems to breathe life into objects.
LA COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE
“The clown and the equestrienne”, brothers to the poets and the painters, whose nomadism gave a meaning to their life.
“The end of the journey”. Pio Santini was deeply devoted to his Italian roots and to the culture that gave a place to the theatre, the opera, the art of words, the music of words and the colours. While painting he found the spirit of this theatrical form: the commedia dell' arte, an art which had never existed but on stage. The painter set the ones he loved: parents, children... and created an intimate theatre, close to the actors’ universe. That’s how Pio Santini represented his three sons,
“The three brothers, side by side like proud entertainers: "the parade", with a blustering look under their occasional hats. An alienation effect that sets them apart and makes them belong to the space of time. Santini sets "his" Italian comedy stage, with singular accents and dramatic tones, with strange or derisively details, poetic fragments of the performing arts that he collects with keen observation. The force of the paintings is what they suggest,
“My Parents”, “The teenager declaimaing”, “The box” (cover), “Gloved Harlequin”, “The cabman in the sun”...
and the “Spanish dancers” in a whirling and proud flamenco.
And then, the emotion arises from this tiny serious suspense where the painter leaves his objects and his characters -"a pause of life in the bosom of life "- Goethe wrote about the mark of beauty.