Guglielmo Coladonato

CRITICAL APPRECIATION AND OPINIONS

“.... the pictorial qualities of this artist, who ‘is consumed by the heat of passion’, so to speak, and tackles the canvas with amazing strength and inventiveness, are primarily those that spring from an intense and adventurous nature accustomed to standing firm in the face of hardship, in a continuous experience of himself. Admire his landscapes painted with broad brush strokes, almost as if the colour and light has been gouged out to disclose them on the coarse depth of the canvas, due precisely to this need to tackle a technique that requires energy and commitment. Coladonato knows how to impress forceful energy into his country views, his landscape studies featuring flashing stormy lights and his views of forest copses suddenly lighted by the sun’s rays, which makes him similar to the “fauve” painters, because of his outlook and approach to painting, besides his style and technique, with short brush strokes, which at times are almost divisionist, in a synthesis of constructive forms....”.
Valerio Mariani

“... This painter, who knows how to impress the warm colours of ripe corn on the countryside and beautiful forms on a female nude that time cannot deteriorate; who can humanise a dead bird hanging from a dead branch; who stretches out a hand towards the fire maidens, almost as though he wished to console them, today lives in a house near the Aurelia highway, where he paints moving from one subject to another. His versatility surprises those who are used to recognizing today’s painters mainly from the subject matter rather than the brush stroke. You can recognise Coladonato from the warm shades of light he uses, the reflections cast by shadows, the meaning of each one of his works”.
Renato Carocci

“... If it is true that God speaks to the prophets, it is equally true that God speaks to artists and poets, who, like the prophets, are a bond and a medium between beauty and mankind, and if beauty is God, painters and poets are but the direct and authentic revealers of the existence of the true God, the dispenser not only of the beauty of Creation, but also of the grace of painting, as an expression of poetry and emotions. Coladonato paints according to this transcendental grace. Mysticism and esotericism, which live and are exalted to bring to life and exalt, at one and the same time, the spirituality and refined taste of the artist..”
Renato Marmiroli

“.... Years ago, Gugliemo Coladonato appeared in a TV show, presented by a US journalist, on that occasion he painted a nude live, from the charcoal drawing to the brush work. Thus, the name of Guglielmo Coladonato is also associated with the first live nude on TV. Twelve episodes on Telefantasy and then eight on Telemare. A programme that none of the other contacted painters had accepted, because it is no easy matter to study a model, make charcoal sketches and then do the actual painting in less than an hour, but it was precisely Coladonato’s technique that permitted him to exhibit his enormous talent in front of the cold and ruthless lens of a TV camera. Many critics, speaking of him, have said that ‘Coladonato paints with brushes of light’, and this is precisely this impression his works give”.
Luisa Vitali

“.... Exhibitions held in the top museums of Italy, London, New York, Venezuela, hundreds of awards, critical appreciations and even an unusual event: painting a female nude live on TV. You can’t stop success! Many of Coladonato’s works are in the museums of Rome, Milan, Florence, New York, London, at the United Nations headquarters and at the Chamber of Deputies of Rome.
The artist influenced by Dalì, whose artworks are reminiscent of the “Fauves”, decided to search for and meet those people who helped him during his tormented childhood. He went to visit his old friends at the Villagio del Fanciullo at Silvi Marina, the child refuge where he had been looked after as a child, and his benefactors in Switzerland, who used to go and visit him there. And so? Exhibitions in Europe, first of all in Switzerland and Belgium.
We are no experts, so here we must repeat the words of the great writer Ignazio Silone (the author of “The Bread and the Wine”), also from Abruzzo like Caldonato. The two used to meet often in Rome, where the painter had gone to live in a nice residential area on the Via Aurelia.
Silone says: “Coladonato is ‘possessed by fire’, so to speak, he searches for a time dominated by pathos and humanity. Indifference, hate, the future, always represented by women or children, often by pain or hope. Everyday men who lose themselves in a hundred different directions; a pair of hands about to clasp each other; a girl bending down over a dead body; the eternal search for truth”.
The catalogue of his works reveals a tormented childhood, which has led Coladonato to his achievements. A painter of reality? Yes, why not ...?
But what is the meaning of a few words in a catalogue? Coladonato’s work needs to be discovered and appreciated first hand, in order to be accepted and loved. The child Guglielmo, in the village of Silvi Marina, is no longer an orphan or an adolescent, he’s become a conqueror”.
Lelio Rigassi