Titolo: Artist

1. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN GUARDIA SANFRAMONDI

The XVII and XVIII centuries were for Guardia Sanframondi times of intense economic , social and above all cultural change. This Samnite town, already under Carafa denomination, had intensified its relations with the Kingdom of which was the center of new unrest that was developing in all areas of knowledge. It is thanks to the city of Naples, that Guardia got “a breath of fresh air” from the contemporary culture that was spreading throughout Europe. Such prosperity and cultural wealth brought further growth and development to the town with different elements of the town blossoming and which would symbolize those times of change. In fact, those were years that gave rise to large sums of money being spent for new works which were commissioned to prestigious artists of the time. Further testimony to the prosperity of the time are the works of Paolo De Matteis, Pietro Bardellino, Francesco Narici e Domenico Antonio Vaccaro who gave their artistic talent to no fewer than to three different churches in Guardia Sanframondi: Ave Gratia Plena, San Sebastiano e San Rocco (see section Places of Interest)

PAOLO DE MATTEIS (Piano Vetrale 1662 – Napoli 1728) Italian painter. He worked especially in the Kingdom of Naples between the end of 1600s and the beginning of 1700s. ********* Paolo De Matteis, was born in Pietra Vetrale, district of Orria, in the current province of . He trained with Francesco di Maria in Naples, them with . In 1682 he was to Rome with Giovanni Maria Morandi, who introduced him to the Academy of St. Luca’s milieu. In Rome he met the Marquis of El Carpio, Gaspar Méndez de Haro y Guzmán, with whom he returned to Naples in 1683, when the Marquis was named Viceroy of Naples. From 1702 to 1705, De Matteis worked in Paris, under the patronage of Luigi XIV, than in Calabria e Genoa. In Genoa, he painted the“Immacolata Concezione con l’apparizione di San Girolamo”. Upon returning to Naples, he painted decorative schemes for Neapolitan churches, including the vault of the San Ignatius’s chapel in the church of Gesù Nuovo in

Naples. He also painted the Assumption of the Virgin for the Monte Cassino Abbey. Between 1723–1725, De' Matteis lived in Rome, where he was commissioned by Pope Innocent XIII. He also worked in Austria, Spain, England and France. His pupils were Ignacio de Oliveira, Bernardes Peresi, and members of the Sarnelli family including Francesco, Gennaro, Giovanni, and Antonio Sarnelli. Others pupils were Giuseppe Mastroleo, Nicola de Filippis, Domenico Guarino and his daughter Mariangela de Matteis. He died in Naples in 1728 and was buried in the Church of the Conceprion to Chiatamone.

DOMENICO ANTONIO VACCARO (Napoli 1678 – Napoli 1745) Italian painter, sculptor and architect. He created many important sculptural works and architectural projects in Naples. His later works were executed in an individualistic Rococo style.

********* Domenico Antonio Vaccaro was born in Naples; his parents was the sculptor Lorenzo Vaccaro and Caterina Bottigliero. He studied for the first time with his father and then became a student of the painter Francesco Solimena. He initially dedicated himself to painting but from about 1707 onwards he seems to have worked almost exclusively as a sculptor and architect. In the 1703 he started painting again. Amongst his most interesting works we can find the statue of Moses in the church of San Ferdinando, interior work in the Chiesa di Santa Maria in Portico, and the statues of Penitence and Solitude on the premises of the monastery (now museum) of San Martino. He also designed the Palazzo Spinelli in Tarsia, Palazzo Caravita in Portici, the Church of San Giovanni in Capua, and he reconstructed the Cathedral of Bari. In September 1717, commissioned by the Ordine Ospedaliero di San Giovanni di Dio, he began the makeover of the Church of Santa Maria della Pace. Finally, he designed the Palace of the Immacolatella in the center of Naples and the small church of Santa Maria della Concezione a Montecalvario, near Naples. Vaccaro died in 1745. Upon his deadth many construction works where left unfinished but these were subsequently brought to completion by his children who had followed in his footsteps and other architects. He had as pupils Francesco Pagano, Giuseppe Astarita, Giovanni del Gaizo, Luca Vecchione, Antonio Donnamaria, Filippo Falciatore e Ludovico Vaccaro.

FRANCESCO NARICI (Sestri 1719 – ? 1785) Italian artist and author of important works placed in various Neapolitan and Genovese Churches. ********* Francesco Narici was born in Sestri (Genova) in 1719. He studied in Naples where he moved in 1735 and where it is thought he was trained by artists from the circle of Francesco Solimena (1657-1747). Narici’s first documented work was executed in 1751 for the Church of S. Anna in Capuana in Naples, and it shows the strong influence of Solimena. By 1755 Narici produced some altarpieces for Neapolitan Churches and for the Church of Ave Gratia Plena in Guardia Sanframondi. In the next decades the artist returned to his birthplace, Genoa, where he painted portraits of Doge Marcello Durazzo and members of the Monticelli family. In the 1778 the painter signed the canvas representing “l’Assunzione della Vergine” for the parish church of Bedalucco (Imperia), commissioned two years earlier by Francesco Striglione and in the same years he was commissioned for an altarpieces representing “Sant’Antonio Abate in meditazione” for the church of the San Giovanni a Sestri. The artist’s career ended around 1179. From this year we have the “Vergine con San Nicola e Ignazio di Loyola”, commissioned by the church of the Ave Gratia Plena in Guardia Sanframondi. He died in 1785.

PIETRO BARDELLINO (Napoli 1732 – Napoli 1806) Italian artist and author of important works placed in various Neapolitan Churches.

********* Pietro Bardellino was born in Naples in 1732, and was initially trained by Francesco De Muria. We can notice the influence of the De Muria in his work “L’Ultima Cena”, preserved in the Cathedral of Bitonto, which recalls the prototype of the Holy Family. Another work of this period is “La Vergine appare a Pio V e a Don Giovanni d’Austria”, executed in 1778 in the Church of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli. In 1773 he became director of the Accademia Napoletana del Disegno which later became the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Naples. Bardellino joined with the Rococo movement, influenced by . In later years he produced masterpieces such as the portrait of Gaetano Barba (1790, Naval Accademy of San Luca) and frescoes of 1792 for the Girolamini’s Library. He died in Naples in 1819.

2. THE MODERN/CONTEMPORARY PERIOD

In our more modern times Guardia Sanframondi has seen the developmentof some enterprises in artistic field, from local artists and resident foreigners, that aim to give renewed functionality of our medieval town. Among these we remember:

GIOVANNI MANCINI (Guardia Sanframondi 1953 – Guardia Sanframondi 2016)

Giovanni Mancini was born in Guardia Sanframondi (Bn), on April 15th 1953. His parents, Maria Falato and Antonio Mancini, were from Guardia. They were farmers and used to take him in the fields so he began to explore a world made by bugs, fossils, roots and minerals, which he liked analyzing. His curiosity followed him for all his life. Since he was a child, he liked drawing. In 1966, he started to attend the Art School in Benevento where he developed his passion thanks to teachers like Nunzio Bibbò, Mario Persico, Mario Rotili, Rubens Capaldo etc. During this period he works hard and he exposes his works in some exhibition, winning the prize “Premio ANSI” (BN). In 1971, after graduated from high school, he joins the Institute of Fine Arts in Naples, attending the Sculpture class, with Professors Castelli and De Vincenzo. De Vincenzo will become his leader and there will be an emotional connection between the two of them that will last forever. He falls in love with Naples’ artistic heritage and begins to study deeply the history of art of the Campania region. He understands how art spread in his territory. He wants to make people become aware of that heritage and founds a cultural association with a group of friends, called “Friends of Monuments” in order to protect the artistic heritage of Guardia Sanframondi, often exposed to the negligence of institutions. De Vincenzo follows him and pushes him to take part to organizations in Naples, Salerno, Caserta, Benevento and Milan at the Palace of Art “Fair of young artist”, organized by Mario de Micheli. After finishing his studies, he decides to become a professor, as substitute teacher in middle school and in high school of Benevento.

In 1977, he becomes professor of Techniques of sculpture at the Institute of Fine Arts in Catanzaro. At the same time, he has been called as art conservator at Capodimonte Museum (Na), with a permanent contract. But he chooses to be a professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, due to his love for sculpture. Here, he spends time with the dean Carmine Di Ruggiero, the professors Giovanni Pisani, Alfredo Scotti, Guglielmo Longobardo, Massimo Perez, Tony Ferro. He travels every week from Guardia Sanframondi to Catanzaro. During this travels by train often with his collegues, he develops several ideas and projects of work.

In Catanzaro he meets Caterina Tarantino, one of his students, they fall in love and got married in 1980. They will have two kids and will stay together until the end. During this period, he analyzes the research on the materials and on the new technologies. He keeps up with the new products and likes to experiment everything. This is an important period for his artistic production. In 1990, he moves to Frosinone, from 1996 to 2006 he moves to Rome, in 2007 he goes back to Frosinone. In 2010, although keeping his job in Frosinone, the professor Giovanna Cassese offers him the class of Marble and Rock Techniques for the art conservation at the Institute of Fine Arts in Naples. It is his dream to be able to go back to where everything started, at the Institute in Naples. He loved art so much that became a part of him. He lived for art and tried to pass down his passion to his students. It made him feel free, without prejudices or obligations. His students attended his classes enthusiastically. During his lessons there were more and more students, everyone stopped to attend his class and asked him for some advice about their works. He was always ready to give explanations, he enjoyed to give his knowledge to his students.

In 1997, he buys with his wife a piece of an ancient palace and restore it and it becomes the expositive place “DOMUS MATA”, Museum of arts and traditions. His last wish is to organize artistic events, giving the opportunity to make culture in a wonderful place. He managed to host only two events: a retrospective of his teacher Giovanni De Vincenzo, and a union of students of the Institute of Fine Arts in Naples. After the SLA forces him on a wheelchair, he keeps on teach in Naples, and lives his illness with dignity. He passed away on January 2nd 2016.

More info: http://www.domusmata.it/

GIACOBBE FALATO (Benevento 1968)

Giacobbe Falato was born in Benevento on 7th September, 1968. He lives in Guardia Sanframondi and works as a painter. He attended the Liceo Scientifico of Guardia Sanframondi and then, the Art School of Brera. In Brera, in 1992, he became painting master, participating at many art exhibitions and receiving many awards. When he returned to Guardia, he opened a workshop and studio where he continues his artist activities. Over the last years, he has experimented with other techniques such as the pottery. For this reason, in 2001, he participated in the Settima Rassegna di Ceramica Artistica in Cerreto Sannita, coming in first place and winning a gold medal. Giacobbe Falato continues his painting studies, studying portraits, still-life and landings. His style ranges from the Classic to Metaphysical and in his paintings,

he prefers the contrast between light and dark.

More info: https://it-it.facebook.com/giacobbe.falato

CARMINE CARLO MAFFEI (Benevento 1966)

Carmine Carlo Maffei was born in Benevento in May 24th 1966. Graduated in Art at the Istituto D’Arte of Cerreto Sannita, he works and lives in Guardia Sanframondi (BN). From Guardia Sanframondi to Caserta; from Capri to Rome; from Naples to Palermo; from Ferrara to Florence; from Brindisi to Cesenatico; from Milan to Bassano del Grappa; from Forlì to Nice; from Montecarlo to Cannes; from Montreal to New York; Sidney and finally Brussels: Carmine Carlo Maffei’s Le Pietre Vive has braved the distances extracting from the centuries of oblivion a memory of a non- time, a non-space and a non-place. This outpost in the southern Apennines, famous for its rituals and representations, for its ancestral secrets fixed into the rocks of the ancient village of Guardia Sanframondi, this is the artist’s hometown and seed bed of the gallery-studio Pietre Vive. A revelation made manifest to the Artist and whose touch can turn even stones into a language. Energy filled, hard and disruptive as well as melancholy, delicate and heartfelt with its houses anchored to the rocks, olive groves and vineyards which absorb the colours of intense sunset. Guardia has been the generous womb which has received and guards the human and cultural roots of a man who has entrusted his ability to communicate via his paintings in tones which are shy and dry but which have depth and decisiveness, forceful colours; and his rough sculptures. Hence time seems to have stood still among the houses kissed by sunsets, the vines which slope down towards the valley below, in what is a triumph of greens, reds, yellows and browns, Maffei expresses his pulsating talent, which in turn feeds an inexhaustible curiosity for nature, transforming it into a glimps of what lies within the heart and the head of a suffering, humbled and defeated humanity, but which is still able to express vital emotions. The impact is strong. Its immediate and reveals ruffled memories via the artist’s use of colour, uniting both love and death, in an never ending and definitive play, Thanatos and Athanatos, in the anxiety of an unspeakable inheritance which is sought, pursued, and then pinned down into ethical geometrics, uniform, uncomposed, understated and tangible. It is a language of ethics that turns religion into religiousness: an overpowering mysticism which rolls out certainties from fading perceptions, into reality of suffering.

His paintings are like Carmine Maffei’s smile, which is both ironic and melancholy, the meaning of which are laced within each of his works but which only a few are able to grasp the subtle nuances, and who are drawn in by force of the message that

is there ready and waiting to reveal itself. Within the kaleidoscope of light and shadow, the artist can condence into a few words that this is essential. Expectation and questions that, unresolved, dwell upon the complexity of existence; the contamination of existence; the coming into existence of existence… These are revealed via symbols, allegories and deliberate tangles of ambiguity so has to exalt the chromatic mastery that turns manual relief into Art and Art into movement and a projection towards a return to origins. The origins of life, the origins of love, the origins of pain, the origins of death: the origins which are nonetheless symbiotic and thrill of an unending hope which dominates within its undulating lines which are the waves of poetry. So the flaw of time brings on and transforms that which is static into that which is dynamic, via filters of sound and amazement: the sound of heavy and incessant rain; the sound of the stones that are still; the noise that arises drop after drop and which Carmine Carlo Maffei captures and makes manifest.

More info: https://www.facebook.com/Galleria-Studio-Pietre-Vive- 1594302157480266/

THOMAS NEALE (Santa Barbara, California USA)

Per maggiori info: http://www.thomasnealestudio.com/

CLARE GALLOWAY (Scozia, UK) Per maggiori info: https://claregalloway.com/ https://it-it.facebook.com/claregallowayartist/