Friedrichs Pontone is proud to announce an exclusive and unique exhibition of paintings by Italian master, Luciano Ventrone. Born in 1942, he had a long and distinguished career, the outcome of a prodigious talent and a determined commitment to its development. Collected worldwide, with an international reputation, he was, at heart, a thoroughly Italian painter. His practice was steeped in the spirit of classicism and the tenets of order and beauty forged in the Italian Renaissance, particularly the Cinquecento.
The majority of paintings are still lifes of fruit and flowers. There are also two exquisite studies of the female nude. Ventrone paints all with an unrelenting, analytical eye; his technique one of thoroughgoing and forensic pictorial representation. This rigour makes for images of rich optical intensity, where colour, form and texture are rendered with startling precision to create a compelling illusion of heightened reality.
Ventrone's subjects are carefully composed. Their organic variety is contained within an organising principle that channels classical ideals of harmony and proportion. Everything is placed just so to reveal the essential. Within the painter's formal structure we see the forces of nature at work: the cherries, lemons and grapes bloom; leaves and onion stalks desiccate and curl; torn pomegranates spill their seeds. These bountiful combinations are caught at a moment of sumptuous beauty before their immanent and inevitable decay.
The still lifes echo and reference those of Caravaggio and the seventeenth century Dutch masters Johannes Bosschaert and Jan Davidz de Heem. Ventrone aligns himself with his forerunners and makes a contemporary iteration of their themes. In these images of succulent, mouth-watering materiality ideas of control and appetite interplay: we are caught between discipline and desire, our hunger provoked, all too aware that we are viewing a vibrantly realistic construct that records something already departed.
Luciano Ventrone died last year. Pontone Gallery enjoyed a close relationship with him and feels honoured to have aided him in his vocation. It has been a great pleasure for all who worked with him to witness the flourishing of his art over so many productive years. His remarkable pictures remain as testament to a singular vision.
