It’s a common occurrence for any respected anthology. Understandably so, since there’s nothing more unbound and anarchic than an artist’s journey. Thus, it’s not surprising that the exhibition of Ferdinando Ambrosino — a painter with a career spanning over half a century — raises the usual questions. Should one adhere to a philological criterion, organising works by individual research themes and chronology? Or should the focus be on the outcomes of the latest period, showcasing more mature paintings that simultaneously resonate with the tastes and sensibilities of newer generations? Furthermore, should the exhibition document the trajectory of a long journey, which has not succumbed to flattery and deviations (despite a twentieth century overwhelmed by groups, research, and manifestos), or should it limit itself to a careful selection of paintings, sufficient to represent a precise journey back in time?

The choice was made for a high-impact exhibition, featuring works of full and recognised validity, through which to unravel those knots (numerous and all of unpredictable continuity) that lead us back to the youthful works. It’s a risky operation, some might say. Yet, Ambrosino’s painting, despite the evolution and variants of an increasingly essential and rarefied language (almost liquid, for that light which emanates from the paint pigment and consumes its substance), always offers an underground connection to previous outcomes. These are the ones that take us back to past civilisations (Greece and Rome), to their legacy of myths, to a world where the boundaries between Olympus and Christianity become increasingly blurred, as do those between history and legend.

Because, aside from some early experiences, Ambrosino’s painting has had one sole source of inspiration and — upon reflection — a single language. And while the former offers rather straightforward evidence, the latter requires a minimum familiarity with the colours, fades, and uncertain images characteristic of this research. We are faced with works that never aimed to render reality — much less exalted by the use of perspective — but rather those fragments and glimpses made of myths and history, and relived with enchanted eyes between fantasy and lyricism.

Thus, starting from the 1970s, the landscape’s structure becomes increasingly less defined, almost dissolving into a space that no longer stretches towards the horizon, but remains entirely in the foreground. The difference from previous experiences therefore passes through an increasing renunciation of all descriptivism, even regarding natural elements, as in the case of skies now reduced to just a strip of blue.

Indeed, the choice to exclude any representation meant that places, artefacts, and history had to be erased, as such, to transform into symbols, into images of strong synthesis, into citations and statements reduced to their mere outlines, to forms just sufficient for their identification.

Hence, a painting loaded with unknowns, entrusted to uncertain and elusive content, where there is no place for the geography of places and the events that have marked their changes. This gives rise to a kind of journey between two civilisations. For which it is not possible to determine where the allure of Greece ends to the advantage of Rome or vice versa. And it is also in this ambiguity, another component of that subtle charm, which is characteristic of Ambrosino’s painting.

The progressive exclusion of real data has thus made room for a wider coalescence of images, visions, magics, suggestions. All loaded with those memories and feelings that represent the constant matrix of this painting. Which results in a mix, where the renunciation of any spatial constraint fuels a language, which only seemingly can be called new, since already the first attempts recorded expressionistic drives.

And it is in this long season, marked by the evolution of his research, that Ambrosino has intended to dedicate a large “tableau”, where the most significant testimonies of his painting practice are variably featured. A sort of montage devoid of any anchoring, from the content to the chromatic. A crowd of works in constant fluctuation between the real data (think of the various self-portraits) and its refusal, between the still strong calls of the image and its progressive retreat.

A courageous operation, which allows to read the tormented adventure of the painter through a sort of unicum, which involves and disorients at the same time. Thus – observed from a few meters away – the precise juxtaposition of the paintings produces the effect of a single great work of difficult approach, but extraordinary charm. From the early nineties onwards, the language becomes essential, dissolved, where only colour – which is the magical component of this painting — gives life to the story. Which continues to draw from the inexhaustible mine of those two civilisations, which have nourished the personality and culture of the painter.

We are in that season whose banner, in some respects, is rather improperly traced back to the icons. Nothing in common neither in terms of content (ideology and sacredness), nor formally, gold and Byzantineisms. Here the inspiration opens up to different places and times, where the structure of the work is entirely entrusted to the sign-colour relationship. Thus, the former becomes more dissolved and consumed, in favour of a wider presence of anarchic chromatisms and original mixtures, in which the skilful distribution of light (gaps that can be tender and violent) is often opposed to dark shadow areas. A single reference: the diptych “The Mediterranean Revolution”. The work, loaded with mysticism and almost on the borders of the sacred, lives by virtue of colour alone, which, increasingly captivating and “narrative”, constructs the uncertain gallery of intricate and mysterious images. Visionary.

Once again, more than colour, it is the light that fuels a range of interpretations. That yellow reminiscent of rough parchment and lit by ambiguous reflections, opens the way to a series of emotions increasingly difficult to decipher.

But Ambrosino’s painting has precisely in this apparent “closure” one of its strengths. The painter proceeds through recalls, memories, emotional drives. An uncontrollable, fluid ensemble, that initiates that project destined to undergo the inevitable modifications due to other impulses. Ambrosino thus constructs his narrative, advancing at every brushstroke on the most treacherous of grounds, to leave us the subtle pleasure of losing ourselves in this tangle of past and present, of ideas and feelings, that have managed to become image and poetry.