Viva Italia

Two artists; two Italys

by Leon Nigrosh

WORKS BY ITALIAN ARTISTS: ANTONIO BARBERI & GIOVANNI LAZZARINI
At the Moll Art Center, Anna Maria College, Paxton, through April 8.

Both Antonio Barberi and Giovanni Lazzarini were born, raised, and continue to live in small towns along the shoreline of Tuscany, Italy, not far from Pisa. Though they've witnessed their once-pristine villages become engulfed in a coastal-slash-tourist-slash-resort strip, they've managed to keep producing paintings reminiscent of their childhoods: Lazzarini's father was a sea captain; Barberi's family manufactured paint. Several years ago, well-known Paxton sculptor Lori Vaccaro Zamansky saw their work and helped arrange for them to exhibit in the United States.

The current exhibition at Anna Maria contains 56 paintings by the pair. Viewers have the chance not only to gain an understanding of the artists' output, but also to compare their different styles.

Lazzarini's paintings reflect nostalgia for another era, when offshore fishermen plied the trade in small, rickety sailboats. Whether in repose or at work, the weathered, hirsute pescatores possess a sense of Old World simplicity and inner strength. This physical appearance is made stronger partly because of the way that Lazzarini prepares his canvas boards. Instead of typical, white-gesso undercoating, he first applies black oil paint, which serves to anchor his palette and to create a muted appearance throughout. A varnished glaze across each finished work harks back to the golden age of classical Italian painters like Caravaggio (1571-1610). Even Lazzarini's painting Card Players continues in the master's footsteps, except that his fishermen appear more genuine than the foppish 16th-century cheaters portrayed in Caravaggio's The Cardsharps.

Lazzarini's oil paintings are clear, illustrative. We see an attention to detail, an expressive exaggeration -- particularly in his characters' gnarled hands and feet, as well as their wrinkled visages, suggesting that these sea laborers have prematurely aged. In Il Faro (The Beacon), three barefooted old salts gaze wistfully at a small barca as it moves out to sea under full sail. Lazzarini's deliberate use of brush strokes molds each man's doleful face with intensity. Using the same careful application of paint, he shows strength and determination in the face and stance of the Figure of the Fisherman, who's surrounded by sea gulls as he hawks his daily catch on the pier.

While Lazzarini sticks to a central theme with his paintings, Barberi is all over the place. He shows sparsely delineated, nearly abstract still lifes of various fruits and containers, alongside lavish paintings of women, as well as portraits of owls. Clearly, his consolidating interest is his unabashed love of color, and the physical act of manipulating his acrylic medium. His Figure with Birds is a frenzied fugue of brilliant colors, slashed across a canvas, reminiscent of paintings by Willem De Kooning (1904-1997). But the mask-like face of the young lady who emerges from Barberi's cacophony is more feminine than any De Kooning woman.

Barberi often paints his subjects in one color and then repaints them with a complementary hue. On occasion, he applies a resist so the overpainting crawls back, exposing an interesting textural effect. Other times, he wipes off his first colors, then completely repaints the image. His Il Gufo (The Owl) has undergone all three transitions. On inspection we see the resist leaving a puddle effect while, in other parts, the built-up and wiped-down effect is evident. It all presents a somewhat abstract, yet pleasant image of a quizzical bird. In contrast, the paints in Barberi's Birdcage with Canaries have a watery look that renders the sad birds nearly transparent.

Though never quite entering the realm of abstraction, many images flirt dangerously close. In The Boats of Newport, his vessels are basically white triangles, while the craft in Sail Away is like puffy clouds floating above a pastel vista. And when viewed from 10 feet, his Seagulls and Boats is just a swirl of color; at two feet, it becomes flowers, boats, birds, and -- flying fish?

Barberi's scattershot approach to his subject matter, and his overall involvement with color, extends to his frames. Each has been brushed and tinted in attempt to enhance the canvas's image. Unfortunately, because the frames are of poor quality, this added labor doesn't do justice to the otherwise engaging paintings.

It's a thoughtfully arranged exhibit, giving us the chance to compare works of two countrymen who live and paint in the same area, but whose upbringings gave them equally strong, yet remarkably different outlooks.

The gallery is open Wednesday through Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m., or by appointment. Call 757-1429.