Sunset with the artist – Antonio Sannino
Antonio Sannino at Treville Positano – July 7th 2021
An evening with the artist Antonio Sannino, surrounded by its magnificent paintings in a wonderful location as Villa Tre Ville, in Positano, has been the great event planned for July 7 in collaboration with the Liquid art system.
The Italian artist Antonio Sannino raised in Naples but has lived in different cities like Rome and London, to be back in his hometown and collaborate with the Liquid art system since 2008. His research starts from afar and has its roots in the landscape tradition linked to Naples, thanks to the events related to the Grand Tour during the XVII century, which saw the city as an inevitable trip. From the deep study of this cultural awareness, Antonio Sannino’s art is enriched with contemporaneity, with a new and unprecedented look. Sannino experiments with a technique that guarantees an almost pop flatness: the use of resin capable of vitrifying oil colors spread on aluminum support: the result is a thin and smooth surface that enhances the compositional depth, a sort of no-landscape, through which the artist no longer wants to represent reality, but alludes to it, preferring to grasp its strongest expression.
His water surfaces go beyond a simple reproduction of a stretch of water but include waves and surrounding rocks that are uniquely tactile; the large painted cities, taken at dusk or in the darkness of night, appear iridescent in the windows’ reflections colored lights.
The aluminum works have a unique technique, sometimes almost opposite to the traditional application of paint on the surface. Some lines and textures are obtained with aluminum, which comes out as the artist removes color from the surface.
Surrounded by the beautiful location of Villa Tre Ville, the aperitif Sunset with the artist Antonio Sannino was a wonderful chance to have a close look at the magnificent works meeting the artist.
For many years, Antonio Sannino has been enjoying painting the sea pretending to be a figurative painter whilst playing to be an abstract artist: the outcome of his “shining sea” is a shining beauty, and his paintings – skilfully painted on aluminium with a special technique and, for this reason, even shinier – are borderline between the portrayal of water and a game of colours where we can barely recognize the liquid element. Hence, we dive with the same pleasure into the water or into the colour, since they are equally transparent. The same feeling of transparency persists also when Sannino deals with other subjects, like the cities and the woods, preferring a thin and delicate surface, a pop-ish flatness resulting from using a resin able to vitrify oil paint: his metropolises – whose urbanscapes are portrayed at dusk or at night – appear shimmering in the reflections of glass windows, the buildings depicted in chaotic perspectives seem to be in motion, and also the pieces of the sky are the result of a profound vision rather than of a mere reproduction.
