Who says Romantic art is dead ?
In these troubled times sculptor Ettore Greco and the painter Pilar Saltini introduce mood, sentiment and anguish into their artwork, as a possible reaction to the darkening climate of our current world.
Twisting, writhing and grimacing Greco’s terracotta and bronze nudes seem to evolve in a world of chimerae and dark visions. Reminiscent of Auguste Rodin’s creatures from the Gates of Hell they are contemporary expressions of the anguished souls of Dante’s Hell and Purgatory. Their beautifully rendered limbs and elongated sensuous torsos yearn for escape from reality into the realm of dream or a subterranean refuge.
In Saltini’s “Over the Border” paintings children, sometimes on their own, sometimes in the company of unidentified adults, ramble on indefinite seashores or float on mysterious seas in fragile boats. They look like furtive refugees escaping the gathering shadows, the sensation of a perceived but undefined danger. The soft blues, salmon pinks and resonant velvety blacks bring to mind the light and colors of pre-romantic 18th century Neapolitan seascapes. They instill a mood of dreamy, gentle melancholy unto the darkening scenes.
