Flavio Pellegrino
Flavio in his Studio
Walking to the Blue Doors
Oil on Canvas
20” x 16”
A
rgentinian, New York-based artist Flavio Pellegrino crafts luminous
and captivating oil paintings that often hover on the brink of
abstraction while retaining elements of figurative forms. This can be as
subtle as the outline of an iconic shape like a bird or the pitched roof of a
house, or a result of the artist’s evocative choice of palette. What could
be nighttime cityscapes appear to glow with yellow light amidst seas of
deep blues; still lifes form with thick daubs of saturated colors set against
pale backgrounds; and seemingly abstract near-geometric patterns begin
to evoke sun-filled landscapes. For all the bravura of his paintings, with
their dynamic compositions and thick layers of oil pigments, Pellegrino
achieves a great many understated but profound effects throughout his
oeuvre.
The sharpest contrast undoubtedly lies between his daytime and
nocturnal paintings. While the latter are densely packed with short, linear
brushstrokes loaded with paint, the former are so bright as to appear lit
from within. He achieves this effect through a palette of pale yet rich pastel
colors that initially seem sparingly applied, but are in fact full of textures
and grooves created through elaborate layering. Pellegrino describes his
work as “a universe of colorful sensations,” and it is easy to see why in A Few Pink Houses Oil on Canvas 40” x 32”
these compositions that practically radiate midsummer heat.
His uncanny ability to convey the temperature of a place with vivid style invariably evokes the Impressionists and Fauvists.
Yet Pellegrino is forever pushing his paintings towards abstraction without sacrificing their powerfully evocative qualities. The
combination of textures, tonalities and forms created through his brushstrokes suggests dramatic vistas via only the subtlest of
visual cues. He leaves the viewer to fill the tantalizing ridges between his sensitively deployed lines. “The communion between
a viewer and my work is my heaven,” Pellegrino writes. Indeed, his paintings have an embracing, enveloping quality. Their many
levels of surface tensions and subtly abstracted figurative details reward prolonged exploration with brilliant and warming visual
richness.
www.flaviopellegrino.com
www.Agora-Gallery.com/ArtistPage/Flavio_Pellegrino.aspx
89 ARTisSpectrum