I was born under Taurus in 1953
in a small northern Italian town called
I didn’t know then, and I still don’t know today, what leads us to become
an artist or a diplomat, a soldier or a scientist, but I know nature gives
us all an equal chance at the beginning. I’m convinced wealth and poverty
present no hurdle as long as we always possess our own soul wherever we
are; and wherever we are, we can find a way to express the creativity that
desperately yearns to emerge. It’s a question of inner attitude which goes
beyond the weaknesses of vanity or the perversions of pride.
I’ve seen gifted artists living in abject poverty and in extreme luxury
and I therefore feel I’m right in assuming that our fate lies simply in
nature; it follows hidden paths, whether they be hostile or rewarding, which
we cannot know beforehand. I had an inkling of this in the shade of my childhood
willow. I received timorous confirmation in the loneliness forced on me
by my introverted youth. It was not long before certainty arrived.
I remember trying to ignore the path my sensitivity was leading me towards.
I tried in 1967 when, on winning a scholarship, inattentive to the drive
of my imagination and yielding to my father’s prudent rationality, I began
to study nuclear physics. My inquiring, curious nature meant I even enjoyed
studying things so rational as to leave little space for my restless fantasies
but it was no surprise when, a few months later, a creative stimulus which
was becoming more and more difficult to hold back, led me to seek in artistic
expression paths more suited to my skills.
I managed to gain entry to art college but, on finishing, the frustrating
conviction that I hadn’t learned enough led me to paint incessantly to make
up for lost time. Deciding to mine and fashion my “gold”, I drew cartoons,
studied masterpieces, painted numerous portraits and anything else which
might lead me to perfecting the form. When my hands had become creditable
masters, I was extremely disappointed to discover there was no joy in this
triumph. My hands knew “what” to do but not “why” to do it; they were able
to give shape to what my heart was feeling but they didn’t know how to express
emotions: I hadn’t learnt what * the great masters had taught; I hadn’t
yet learnt to “listen short-sightedly to a growing blade of grass or a sleeping
stone”. This soon brought about the inevitable, frustrating void of an unfertile
imagination and with the patience of Job I had to learn to guide it according
to the organic laws of art so that my soul might take wings and fly high
enough to reach the uncertain borders of my thoughts. I attended the
On the basis of this, in 1976, I faced public opinion in a multitude of
collective and one-man exhibitions, enjoying widespread, sincere approval
which often made me proud and confident I had given, at least to kindred
spirits, the pleasure of seeing what my soul rejoiced at imagining transformed
into shapes and colours.
A fruitful collaboration with the Renoir Art Centre in Taranto, Italy, (which
lasted until my debut in America) enabled me, between one exhibition and
the next, to arrive with creativity and economic serenity, in 1979, to bind
my life to Viarda’s, my companion and wife who in 1982 gave me what at the
time seemed the most precious thing in the world: Alessandro.
With his birth I discovered emotions that were to revolutionise the way
I painted and I at last had a solid starting point. The eternal questions,
whose answers were veiled in mystery, dissolved in the presence of that
new uncontrollable emotion. A new chapter began in my still brief artistic
itinerary. The violent, unknown emotions of that period were reflected in
my choice of subjects and nothing seemed more worthy of being painted; life,
death, time, the eternal antagonism of opposites became the usual subjects
who took human form and peopled my boards.
When I felt ready to face the legendary
Gratified by that flattering debut, I took part with equal fortune in the
next two New York Art-Expos until, in 1987, the meeting with Robert Bane
led to the show at the Tamara Bane Gallery in Los Angeles in 1988 and to
which, considering its success, the ones in 1989 and 1990 were the natural
sequel. The first consequence of the fine outcome of those years was the
desire for a new house with a spacious studio and, a few months later, in
one of those small towns where time is measured by the chimes of the church
bells and where everyone calls each other by their first name, the project
took shape. And it wasn’t the only one: by a pleasant twist of fate, after
eight years of disappointed expectations, on
In the new spacious studio, immersed in the rural peace of the countryside,
I found it easy to give way to the changeable demands of my impatient creativity
and never-satisfied temperament and it was thus that my painted disquiet
found worthy residence in two one-man shows, one in 1991 and the other in
1993, at the Tamara Bane Gallery (with whom I worked exclusively from 1989
to 2001).
In February 1995 I then had the opportunity to exhibit my mosaics for the
first time. I presented them in the Richardson Gallery in Reno (Nevada)
and it was also there that I presented the fist giclée prints, available
today in the most popular art galleries throughout the world. The following
year (1996) I was offered the even more stimulating opportunity of measuring
myself against the Japanese culture and this fantastic chance was given
to me by the Harvest Gallery in
As confirmation that this was a year of excitement and stimulating experiences,
in November 1996 the Tamara Bane Gallery, which had moved to
In 1999, the exquisite Collection Privée de Peinture et de Sculpture art
gallery in Miami chose to host a one-man exhibition and it was a pleasant
surprise to find my works side-by-side with some of the most talented artists
of our time.
Not wanting to disappoint the stereotype that sees every 40-year-old in
the throes of an existential crisis, I chose to ask myself the well-known,
fateful questions which bring no solutions and the only consequence was
my decision to take a long break from exhibiting which would allow me to
focus more clearly on the necessary answers. It was during this search that
in July 2001 I made the decision after 13 years to terminate my exclusive
collaboration with the Tamara Bane Gallery. The consequent desire to at
last allow myself an expressive freedom, devoid of the conditioning that
expects the artist to be coherent and faithful to his formula, gave me new
impulses and drove me, with greater determination, to proceed with proud
certainty even in the face of doubts that the dual nature within us all
often forces us to face.
Free from difficult and at times obscure symbolism, I gradually let myself
be lured by the insidious forms of the female figure, whether they be an
expression of elegiac beauty or bold femininity. Caught up in the outdated
elegance of a dance which reminds us nostalgically of other times or in
the daring brazenness of a proud Amazon with a suggestive gaze, the female
figure is for me today a source and synthesis of barely hidden artistic
satisfaction and of which this book, with which the mg/publisher has chosen
to gratify me, is clear proof. But this is a recent story…
Walter Girotto
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