Fossili Guida (Guide-Fossiles) Painting

Gennaro Corbi was born in Naples in 1943, where he lives and works. He is mainly a painter, but he also devotes himself do drawing and wood carving. In order to understand his oeuvre at its best, it’s necessary to overtake its esoteric value and not to try to give it a rational interpretation. The only thing to do is to appreciate his use of colours, the relation between tones and shapes, and the equilibrium of his compositions. During the creative impulse, Corbi takes inspiration by dreams, as they belong to a world which is more stable and true than the real one. Like a poet or a musician, Corbi tries to give freedom to our inner world and to our ghost. His canvases are about mystery, memories, sometimes about darkness. The unknown figures and worlds he depicts (stairs, landscapes, nudes, cut faces and spirits) are inspired by Kafka’s literature and debtors to Chagall’s and Klimt’s themes and contexts. His figurative style expands itself between dreamlike symbols and visceral reality. His language is transcendental: ancestral and contemporary like love and suffering are. His research is obsessive and scrupulous. The painting used by Gennaro Corbi is fleshless in its different layers, enucleated in the symbolic use of black and white, while brighter colours are more discrete. The depicted space (or the emptiness) is the real protagonist of his paintings. Gennaro Corbi is from Naples, and he is inexorably connected with his motherland’s culture. By looking at his paintings, it’s possible to notice how Pompeian art influenced him. In the construction of shapes and areas, symbols and gestures. Corbi uses golden sheets to emphasize mysticism, like the Sacred painters used to do during the middle age. All his cultured references are related to the artistic traditions of southern Italy. Art Prizes: Acquisition Prize “Premio Avellino” 1976; “VI concorso premio città di Parma”, 1976; Silver Medal at Sacral Art Biennial at Torre del Greco (Naples); “Horizon” Prize, Milan 1978; Roberto Sella Acquisition Prize, Marina di Ravenna.