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Giovanni Gasparro is one of the most brilliant and established names in the contemporary Italian painting scene, an artist who fuses tradition and modernity through a unique and unmistakable pictorial language, a true Italian excellence. Born in Bari on 22 October 1983, Gasparro was trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, where he had the opportunity to study under the guidance of the painter Giuseppe Modica. His passion for art history led him to study, in particular, the Roman stay of the great Van Dyck, from which he drew inspiration for his own artistic evolution. His talent has emerged from the early years of activity and was internationally recognized with his painting “Last Supper”, which found space in the film “Saturno contro” by Ferzan Ozpetek.

His career took a decisive turn in 2009 with the first solo exhibition in Paris, and in 2011 the Archdiocese of L’Aquila commissioned him for an impressive cycle of nineteen paintings for the Basilica of San Giuseppe Artigiano, marking one of the most important contributions to contemporary sacred art. Not only a painter, Gasparro has left his mark even in unexpected contexts: in 2012, his work “Anomaly with the Largillière hat” found its place in the decoration of the Costa Fascinosa, the largest cruise ship in Europe.

With a constant focus on social and ethical issues, Gasparro won the 2013 Bioethics Art Competition, established by the UNESCO chair in bioethics and human rights, thanks to his work “Casti connubii”, a powerful reflection against abortion. This recognition has led to his works being exhibited in cities such as Hong Kong, Houston and Mexico City. His versatility and deep artistic research have led him to confront the great masters of the past in national and international exhibitions of great prestige, from the Biennale of Venice to the National Art Gallery of Bologna, The Grand Palais in Paris and the Stadtgalerie in Kiel, Germany.

His works are now part of public and private collections of importance both in Europe and the United States, as well as in numerous churches and basilicas in Italy and abroad. Among his most recent achievements, the victory of the 100 Italian Excellences Award in Campidoglio, the realization of the portrait of the King of Spain Felipe VI for the Royal Pontifical Basilica of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli in Naples and, in 2022, the debut as a set designer with “Tosca” by Giacomo Puccini at the Teatro Coccia in Novara. In 2024 the painter was commissioned to create the drappone for the famous Palio di Siena of July, an honor reserved only to Italian painters and foreign painters of international renown.

Interview with the painter Giovanni Gasparro: the present and future of contemporary art between inspirations, works and projects

The following interview offers an intimate look at the man and the artist, a unique opportunity to discover the reflections, thoughts and motivations behind one of the most interesting personalities in the contemporary art scene. An encounter with the art of Giovanni Gasparro is a journey through beauty, commitment and spirituality, values that characterize each of his works.

His pictorial style is often described as deeply figurative and dramatic. Where does this expressive choice come from?

I channeled all my creative efforts, from the very beginning, towards figuration. Even in the study of contemporary authors, I have looked with particular uncritical eye to painters and sculptors figurative. For me it is an indispensable need of expression, because it allows me to express with greater vividezza a certain message, a story, the emotion of a feeling. It would not be possible for me to do so with abstraction or other artistic languages. The drama of some scenes is also functional to the narrative. Nothing to do with the trill so in vogue, in my opinion, as in some pictorial forms where the drama appears forcibly ostentatious and not authentic.

What was your artistic background and how did it influence your career?

My artistic training was the canonical, or Liceo Artistico and Accademia di Belle Arti. In high school I attended an experimental course to train future restorers. Therefore, I had very few hours of artistic disciplines and many scientific and humanistic subjects applied to restoration, as it is understood in modernity. This allowed me to have a very rigorous approach to study and material experimentation, also aimed at the protection of my own works or to know the technical processes of the ancients, to make them mine. After these studies, the creative yearning prevailed that the scientific discipline of restoration would be totally nullified. So I decided to dedicate myself exclusively to painting, enrolling in the Academy in Rome.

Many of your works deal with religious themes. What inspired you to explore spirituality through art?

Very trivially I started to paint sacred subjects, from the beginning, being attracted by the old and new testamentary narratives or by the lives of saints, as a Catholic. Commissions have only since taken over. These “eternal” stories are also valid to investigate today’s humanity, the passions that agitate our lives, the yearning towards the divine.

What artists or artistic movements have influenced you most during your career?

They are omnivorous in terms of artistic predilections. I have looked in all directions and have not been precluded from the knowledge and study of any movement or artist. Even the most distant from my painting. I looked a lot at the Hellenistic and Donatello’s statuary, until the early 1900s. I think it is obvious, however, my debt to baroque and late baroque painting, especially Neapolitan, Dutch, Spanish, Lombard and Flemish. But also the Venetian ‘700, the Russian and Italian 800. Listing the authors would be impossible for me. Too many names. I also have the suggestions of other arts, from symphonic and sacred music to opera, ballet to cinema.

Can you tell us about the creative process behind your most iconic works?

The genesis of all works starts at an ideal level. There is always an initial inspiration, a suggestion about a certain subject that pushes me to deepen the iconography and the story to be painted. On these elements I shape the idea at a compositional level and have living models laid. I usually prefer non-professionals because they have a greater spontaneity. So I sketch the work directly with a brush, on canvas (but also on mirror, onyx, slate, table, etc., experimenting a lot). These are the first material stages of the work, then continue with the work. 

How do you see the evolution of the contemporary art market, especially for figurative art?

The art market is currently highly diversified. Compared to the past years, there is less critical and market bias towards contemporary figurative painting. Abroad, frankly, I had more ease, since my first solo exhibition in Paris in 2009, or winning the UNESCO prize in Houston with the opera Casti connubii. I participated with a glaringly figurative painting.

I believe that this process is not destined to run out, despite an armored system that pushes towards other forms of art (performance, installations, photography, video art, etc.). Collectors are tired of mannered forms of art that have now lost even the provocative force they had in the 70s. Today those trends appear as a tired mannerism. Painting, Instead, he continues to speak to everyone and is a living language. He enjoys excellent health. The most honest critics intellectually highlight it openly.

What is the role of tradition in its artistic practice and how does it balance with innovation?

Tradition is the track on which I have always intended to move but not in a sterile way. It would be unjustifiable to repeat the style, subjects and compositions of the past. I think it makes more sense to take these assumptions on board and update them and repropose them in a new way, in the time in which I live. It is a very precarious balance, moving on a weak boundary line. It is very easy to get into the copy of the old or in the banalization, as in the bland provocation that claims to undoing the codes of the past to appear ostentatiously “contemporary”. I think that Tiepolo and Sebastiano Ricci knew how to reactualize Veronese in the eighteenth century, innovating and being children of their own time. An example that could be made for all the greatest authors, paradoxically also for the geniuses who have marked a change of course in their century. I do not understand why it can’t be done today.        

He has made numerous solo and group exhibitions. What was the exhibition experience that he remembers with the greatest affection?

I could not identify a particular exhibition. All of them marked a point of arrival in my creative and life path, a concept that also applies to my works. As a unique experience, however, I could mention the Palio di Siena and the exhibition that was dedicated to me in the city at Palazzo Pubblico, Palazzo Sansedoni and in the Insigne Collegiata of Santa Maria in Provenzano, as author of the drappone. Honor reserved to the greatest international painters, from the second ‘900. The painting became a living object in the city, in the Palio. Nothing comparable happens in exhibitions and museums. Then I was always very excited to exhibit alongside the great authors of the past, and I had the privilege of seeing my paintings in conjunction with those of Pinturicchio, Mattia Preti, Guido Reni, Carlo Crivelli, Corrado Giaquinto, Ribera, Boccioni, Casorati, Morbelli, Bernardo Cavallino, etc.     

What are your next projects planned or on which you are working?

Soon, my sets for the Tosca by Puccini designed for the Teatro Coccia in Novara, will arrive at the theater of Sassari. In October I will inaugurate one of my works for the monumental Minoritenkirche in Vienna and another for a shrine in my Apulia. I’m working for several collective and personal exhibitions in Italy, of which, however, I can not reveal anything yet until the official. Of course I’m working on many new works, even monumental, for private and public collections.

What do you recommend to young emerging artists who want to make painting their career?

I believe that the only wise advice can be to have a serious and methodical approach towards art and not live the assiduous of proposing oneself in a self-referential way, in order to emerge. I daily witness the attempts of experienced artists who dare to climb easy for career and also try to involve me, to advocate their cause, in galleries, museums and with the famous art historians who have written about my painting. It’s the worst way to do art. I always suggest to refuse even to exhibit until you have a corpus of works that has some value of thought and are formally proposible.

A well-done painting is not enough to be an artist. Art is much more and you should not be in a hurry. This is an approach that applies to every area. 

For the images we thank the Luciano and Marco Pedicini Archive.

 

This post is also available in: Italiano