Drawings - Antonio Finelli

Antonio FinelliDrawingsTimeless Portraits by Antonio Finelli. Timeless as the refinement of the face portraiture, near and authentic faces of the Fayoum, the elegance of the details of the Renaissance painting already affected by the Flemish and, above all the deep and inner research of the nineteenth century. Finelli, with his forceful mark, practical knowledge and wisdom, illuminates the details of the white hairs and the wrinkled epidermis but hides what he doesn’t want to show. He never gives a context, he never describes; we just catch their eye and their smiles, we feel free to see in those faces whoever we want to and to reflect ourselves in them. Flawless and penciled paintings as instantaneous and essential pictures made with a hard pictorial mark. He doesn’t copy from the past but he belongs to it, or rather he belongs to that academic practice of the past to set free from it. Observing his work, Finelli already frees himself from the past. He doesn’ t try to enter into the contemporary age, he doesn’t imitate. He just draws. Mimmo Paladino for Antonio Finelli ThemesAntonio Finelli states: “All my drawings have always ‘Self-portrait’ as name, this choice is due to two specific reasons: firstly because even if the word “self-portrait” means the representation of your own person, in the diversity of my drawings there is always a wire that links them and represents me, like the choice of the subjects, the photographic cut, etc. and secondly, because the faces that I draw haven’t to be read by the viewer as a representation of the person drawn; in fact, in my drawings, there aren’t tracks that let identify the name, the age or the provenance of the subject, what matters is the skin and the tracks of time imprinted on it."