Daily Nation 8-12-1987
Classic paintings make a return to exhibitions
Art shows for the next two weeks feature a return to the classic in painting and the second national exhibition by the disabled.
Tonight at French Cultural Centre and Italian Cultural Institute, an exhibition for works by Salvatore Zito, opens.
Salvatore Zito is an Italian artist mostly interested in ancient techniques of the old masters from Caravaggio to the Dutch School of the 17th century. His baskets with apples suggest the first still-life in the history of Western art, the “Basket with Fruits” painted by Caravaggio in the 1594, now in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan.
Still-life painting today is difficult to define. It is also difficult to define Salvatore Zito’s paintings. We can see some objects painted on canvas or on panel.
The objects are fruits (apples and lemons) a glass of wine, baskets, butterflies, a mandolin. In fact, what strikes us in these works is the silent, timeless atmosphere created by the light in which the baskets of fruits are plunged.
The special language of Zito is something between surrealism and realism. But definition distorts the real feeling produced by his paintings.
The mysterious light suggests that Salvatore Zito’s still-life is in another time and in another place: a space in the mind, where only dreams are true.
It is not important what the model is. The reality of objects and things (the baskets, apples, lemons) becomes secondary to the entire composition of the painting.
