The genius of Ambrosino lies in his ability to speak, at once, to the “mundane” and “sacred” in us. When I first came across his work, I was both, consoled and stricken by an incomprehensible melancholy. The figures seemed to me both, liberated yet oppressed. The colors were simultaneously joyful yet austere. I was in the presence of an artistic dichotomy in terms of semantic and style, the likes of which are very rare to come by.
The art historian in me was immediately hurled into a hunt for comparisons in an attempt to address the work in a scholarly fashion. The academic in me was caught of guard and was determined to contextualize the work somewhere within the jargon of art-historical classifications. Yet, there was a power within those canvases and sculptures, luring me away from the comfort zone of periods and genres and ushering me into a meditative realm one can only experience when enshrined in a place of worship.

The iconography was startling. Those holy figures were ethereal in their movement and lightness, yet something about their subtle complexions spoke to me of a world less traveled within the repertoire of iconic traditions. Historically speaking, the gaze of an icon’s eyes is supposed to transport the pious worshipper into a spiritual dimension where flesh and the habits of this world are discarded along the way towards achieving immortal bliss. Yet, the earthliness of Ambrosino’s “Saints” seem to constantly remind the viewer of the inevitable corruption of human nature. Through suggested acts of desire, inflections towards the carnal and playful depictions of profanity, we are confronted with an almost ascetic statement: Salvation is not attainable through a thin veneer of piety and a glazed baroque-like manifestation of gestures and rituals. This is a canon that reverberates not only across the gamut of the artist’s later works, but also in the journey of stylistic explorations and phases that the artist has undergone from early beginnings until the present.

While researching the life of Ambrosino, and the enormity of literature that was written about him and his work, the names of tens of old and new masters kept on popping up. It almost felt like a crash course in art history. The typology of his figures has been compared to Henry Moore’s, the expanding energy of his subjects to Michelangelo’s awakening slaves and other unfinished sculptures, his plethora of intense chromatic compositions to the vividness of the Fauves and some of his technical attributes such as sfumato to Moreau and the Symbolists. His early works have been described as Cubist. Later on, he was relegated to a more “Neo-Realist” style heavily oriented to the championing of the proletariat. His more recent work, which encompasses the maturity of his own artistic voice, has been referred to as an iconographic style that fuses the abstraction and spirituality of the genre with the vivid realism of still lives and landscapes. Throughout all of this, it is safe to say that regardless of stylistic direction or accents of content, Ambrosino’s work, whenever and wherever present, left an impact that rarely went unnoticed.

In 1956, still 18 years old, he caught the eye of the prominent painter Paolo Ricci who, when writing for the Unita’ newspaper, stressed that “young Ferdinando Ambrosino’s ambition is far-reaching,” and furthermore “he has indubitably adopted the wide canvases of the Italian realists as his models, and is aspiring to tackle wide-ranging themes on a large scale.” He moved on to win several major awards, such as the first prize in the National “Fatigati” Exhibition of 1966 and the first prize in the “Citta’ di Ercolano” National Painting Exhibition, also in 1966. In 1967, following the opening of his first solo show at the UCAI in Naples, Alfredo Schettini wrote in the Naples newspapers Il Mattino – the personal exhibition of Ferdinando Ambrosino, the painter from Bacoli, is now on show for all to see… Burning landscapes of a dark color scheme for depicting heroic deeds, brushed on thick layers, at a brisk pace, are…presented as fairy-tale lands and sleeping landscapes such as dreams are made of in which the overall individuality of the source of inspiration also embraces those technical variations that form part of his poetic fantasy.” ln the same year he took part in the “Cerreto Guidi” National Biennial Exhibition of Art where the jury comprising Armando Nocentini, Gastone Breddo and Giuseppe Migneco awarded his work a gold medal. The rest, as one says, is history. But in Ambrosino’s case, it is a rewriting of the modern and contemporary history of Italian painting. In the work at hand, there is a fusion of influences and approaches to both, content and form, which, open scholarly inspection will continue to prove an ingenious capacity to defy the confines of style and claim its own place within art historical research.

It is for all these reasons, that it was imperative to reintroduce the legacy of this major figure of Italian art to New York art audiences. There could have been no better platform to do this than The Chelsea Art Museum. Known for its vision to create dialogue, both cultural and stylistic, the museum has a long-standing commitment towards showcasing artists from beyond American soil whose work is a reflection of an ongoing search for the reinvention of the artistic language of our times.
Ferdinando Ambrosino is one such artist whose particular place in contemporary art practices will be the subject of interest and inspiration for many decades to come. The uniqueness of his work stems from his ability to borrow from the major predominantly modernist genres surrounding him and then to confidently move forward. In the process, he has managed to discard the dead weight of all that which is exhausted and redundant. He has then successfully managed to assemble a metaphorical language that is only his. This language is both, relevant to a profound epistemological discourse with the past and an ongoing dialogue with the future of artistic expression.

In the light of this journey, I strongly believe that worn out comparisons to other masters in order to further understand or legitimize his work are no longer required or desired. Ambrosino is Ambrosino!