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Open Your Art invites you to immerse in the evocative bright and coarse language of maestro painter Lorenzo Chinnici and the ethereal, feminine work of French artist, Christine Bleny.
This exhibition involves great dynamics. Here you will see the intense, authentic universe filled with insular imaginary of one of the most significant Sicilian artists, in contrast to the fragile, mysterious feminine nature of Christine Bleny.
Two interpretations, different in technical styles and emotion, united by a thin common thread: the suffering.
The works of Chinnici represent a coarse and indignant emotion which is subdued by the delicate and often concealed suffering of the works of the French artist.
At Open Your Art, the artists will exhibit the paintings of maestro Chinnici titled Evasion, that was a witness of his meeting with Christine Bleny during The Synergy of Sons exhibition held in London in 2015.
In the painting, one can see the evidence of a heated argument between the two artists in which the French painter indignantly threw a glass of wine on the canvas in protest to the Sicilian artist's painting style, creating a red stain on the work.
A year later, Lorenzo Chinnici and Christine Bleny met at the opening show of Fire on the Water exhibition and the initial conflict, caused by the difference of artistic languages and the hot temper of both, gave birth to a dialogue that grew into a strong friendship and desire of discussion.
The two artists have sealed their agreement by putting their signatures on the painting.
Giovanni Carfì Urso, curator of the exhibition, has created the title Fire on the Water to reflect the impact that two powerful elements have, when they find a balance and a dialog for confrontation.
The exhibition of Milan opens a new season of Fire on the Water project, which came to life on the shores of Lake Como in the summer of 2016: a series of exhibitions that during the year of 2017 will take place in such towns as Positano, Venice and Taormina.
The works of the maestro Chinnici will also be presented at prestigious international exhibitions in New York and Monte Carlo.
Open Your Art is also an opportunity to showcase the contrast between art and design, taking place in a showroom of doors which is the archetype of architecture and which has always been a refined and exclusive object of design.
The inauguration ceremony will be performed by the art critic Antonio Lombardo, who will introduce the artists and will guide the visitors to the understanding of the exhibited artworks. During the evening a monograph of the artist Lorenzo Chinnici will be presented under the editorship of a famous Italian art critic Vittorio Sgarbi.
Let yourself be driven by your imagination.
Lorenzo Chinnici
Born in Merí, northeastern Sicily in 1942, Lorenzo belongs to the same family as Rocco Chinnici (an important magistrate during the 1980’s in Sicily), he interested himself from infancy in colours and art.
His first instruction came from Renato Guttuso whom he met in 1953 at Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto at an exhibition.
The master, struck by the attention to the paintings shown by the “youngster”, offers to teach him how to paint.
There will follow a long association with fellow Sicilian painter Salvatore La Rosa, known by the pen name Furnari. Already established in Liguria, on his return to Sicily, his birthplace, he gets to know the young Lorenzo who, after the meeting with Guttuso is already irredeemibly attracted to the career of artist.
It will be Furnari that gives Chinnici his first colours and initiates him into the secrets of Art.
Numerous times Furnari will exhibit with his pupil, at least until the beginning of the 1960’s.
In 1965, during the course of a very popular impromptu exhibition, Lorenzo Chinnici is noticed and awarded a prize by Salvatore Pugliatti, distinguished jurist, chancellor of the University of Messina and distinguished arts expert.
In the meantime Lorenzo Chinnici receives his diploma and so becomes a professional Artist.
During the course of his career he will frequently meet with fellow artists especially due to his association with the enlightened proprietor of the “Meceden - Milazzo” gallery, Nino Caruso, who since 1969 both in Sicily and abroad has promoted the art of Chinnici.
Lorenzo also has the opportunity to visit the art workshop of Salvatore Fiume, with whom he establishes a strong personal rapport which also sees the exchange of paintings between the two artists on special family occasions.
During the years he becomes acquainted with other great artists: Mario Rossello, Giuseppe Migneco, Aligi Sassu, Ernesto Treccani, and Ugo Nespolo. In these meetings Chinnici always receives positive feedback from his colleagues, feedback which encourages him in his vocation and work as an artist and fortifies him in the pain of the illness which has always afflicted him.
After his forties, the burden of pain increases and Lorenzo, who has never lost the fire of the artists passion and the love of his land, in the 1980’s and 90’s goes on a spiritual retreat to Assisi.
These times of deep introspection help the artist to return to painting newly fortified and determined to do more and better work.
Avoiding notoriety, disinterested in commercial painting and easy success, Lorenzo Chinnici paints for himself, just to work out and bring forth the thoughts and feelings which alternate within his own mind.
Chinnici has followed, through the years his own artistic vein, which he practises in whatever medium is appropriate from watercolours to murals, from frescos on stone.
He continues to work and live in Sicily.
He has been diagnosed for some time to suffer from macular degeneration.
The following critics have written of him: L. Barbera, M. Truscello, G. C Capritti, Maugeri, Nasillo, N. Billè, S. Greco, N. Ferrau, S. Pugliatti, E. Caruso, N. Cacia, M. Danzè, G. Anania, A. Sciuto, M. Francolini, F. Pasini, N. Ferrara, G. Gaudio, F. Baglini, S. Feder, B. Nickolls, C. Carducci, E. Comey, G. Cardone, T. Forrest, YM. Lamine, E. Catalano, Deborah Blakeley, Cav. F. Di Gregorio, C. Vannuzzi Landini, A. Lombardo, R. Pacheco Escalona, F. Bellola, J. Tatano, G. Gorga, G. Carfí Urso, Vittorio Sgarbi.
His name may be found in the most prestigious publications on contemporary Italian art.
Christine Bleny
hristine Bleny has adopted East Grinstead as her new home over the past year, although born in France where she has been painting for 17 years, having learned her technique in several French ateliers. She discovered her talent when she met an art teacher & artist Alain Maymo, proving very quickly that she was the best student in his atelier (studio).
She then went on to improve her portrait skills with Dejan kotri himself a student of the academy of Belgrade in Serbia. Christine has presented many exhibitions in France, Switzerland and England. Christine presents herself as a figurative artist, painting in the medium of oil. Her last exhibition was a collection of portraits, where the subjects are placed in different settings, some real, some unreal and some with an almost fairytale quality, which gives a mysterious character to her pictures where the aesthetic and the dream occupy the space of the subject…
Nuova Porte Prandi
Via Barbavara 5, 20144 - Milano
Italy
