Antonio Sgarbossa

Antonio Sgarbossa
''Antonio Sgarbossa started his artistic career at the age of twelve, attending an artistic ceramics workshop in Bassano. In 1971 he moved to Nouchatel, in Switzerland, where he lived for a few years.It was here with a group of European artists that he gave life to an art studio, named the''Soffitt'' ( Attic ) and was first recognized for his work. He returned to Italy in 1976 and opened his own ceramic art studio. In 1978 he had his first important art exhibition at the Galleria del Fiore, with personal and collective paintings from various towns in Italy and Switzerland. What is a master piece? Mallarme dared to define it: It is the other face of the moon. Antonio Sgarbossa understood him. In art we look for something that is beyond our normal vision, as almost a reflection of ourselves. It is the rather mysterious side that appears, with all the emotions and the thrills of the soul. Here is Sgarbossa's painting that invites us to look beyond. What does it represent? It is up to us to use our imagination to find out, with the clues given to us by the painter. Inside, we see in the background, a dark but bright landscape which changes color. It is certain that we are in front of an organism: which is something that lives its own coherent life. Scarbossa started from the neodadist idea of decoupage, that is to say from stratas of posters and old photographs. He harmoniously transfers it under a pictorial light, into a world that becomes fabulous, as our eyes discover it; loaded with suggestions; extremely sweet in its chromatic harmony; capricious in its images and in continuous movement, ready to capture us deeply and allow us to dream. It is quite clear that Scarbossa comes from a long pictorial mastership training. Recently he has painted his pictures with extra fine layers with inserts of ancient appearances; canovian characters; echoes of Caravaggio and renaissance architectures. Inside of that time, clues of daily life with today's appearance. He has shown the authentic quality of a painter. Now, he has deepened his expressive world, he has become modern but still remains antique, he has dug even deeper and built. We see even more clearly as we get into the moving mechanism of the painting, allowing our feelings to lead us until the painting becomes ours, reflecting our culture, our sensitivity and our way to interpret today. Here is the modernity of this painter. He not only portrays the nomadic and curious culture of today but also that of a deep knowledge of chromatic rendition going back to an ancient past. It is worth observing his work deeply, to taste its suggestive magic from which eminates.. who knows? It could be the other face of the moon that we have always longed to see. The painting of light Antonio Sarbossa is one of the most appreciated and well known painters in Italy and abroad, and I love to define his picture as the painting of light. Infact, it is the light which pivots his pluriannual stylistic quest. A deep and bright source of light is generally placed at the center of the painting, surrounding what the artist wants to emphasise. Objects, streets, furniture and parts of the picture are made to stand out, captured by a more or less intensifying light. At times it so suffused as to emanate hidden sentiments, and at other times violent, but as warm as the summer sun. Then again at other times as seen in the night landscapes, it can have mysterious connotations which can be almost disquieting.''