ANGELO IARUSSO

Biography

Iarusso Angelo. Cava dei Tirreni 1923 - Viareggio 1990

(from “Il Quadrato” Ed. 1999)

In his paintings, two cultures are pointed out and they have found a meeting point and a formal synthesis: the one of colors from Naples that, from Salvator Rosa to the masters of the 1800, expressed itself in the strength of shade and in the enjoyment of narration; the ‘vagera’ one, that in the apuana region and Viareggio in particular, has been expressed by Lorenzo Viani. Naturalism and expressionism contribute to the style of Iarusso in a succession of creative moments: the first one with the chromatic substance and the material fullness of the fat shades, almost a redundancy of a baroque matrix, and the second one in the signs firmness, the violence of contrasts and the allusion with the veristic figurative to the social and human reality. Spiritual brother of Viani, G. Battista Santini and, for some aspects, Viner, Iarusso, arrived in Viareggio at 19 for the military service (he will marry a girl from the versilia cost), brings with himself the elements of the pictorial culture from Naples being born and having studied in Cava dei Tirreni. His activity in Viareggio, in that particular humus of the ‘vageri’, picks up the artistic values of a race, the apuana one, that works hard on the Apuane marble-yieldings and in the Tirreno sea. Inexorably struck by the sea that ‘doesn’t forgive him’, Iarusso suffers its violence and the surgical operations that physically worn him out and depress him in his soul. Looking for life, he trims desire and hope before the atrocious disenchantments, mature a reserved style and at the same time about to burst in the renunciation. No more still lives for an objective reflex in the contemplation; no more serene and tidy portraits, but the reality of man struggling with life and destiny, in the tension among work, pain and death. This way Angelo Iarusso entrusts the message of pain to his art, but also a chink to overcome it. (Mario Cagnetti)

 Deodato Art

The reason that drove us to include Angelo Iarusso’s works in our gallery is the poetry of the poor people he represented in his pictures. The simplicity and the everyday practical difficulties of the sea poor people, who have no demands and just live in that place and in that moment.

Gurdjieff talks about subjective and objective art. A subjective art that is filtered and interpreted by our personality and mind, and an objective one that goes immediately inside, directly, overtaking our prejudice and leaving us defenceless. Gurdjieff cites, as an example of objective art, the Sphinx and other wonders, but in our opinion Angelo Iarusso brings us with his work close to a sample of such distinction. Iarusso knew very well what he wanted to say and his message, thanks to his works, has become communication.