In 1954, a young Italian painter broke his friendship with a painter,
an old painter, full of glory.
Francesco, at at the end of a day spent together in Vallauris,
asked Pablo:
"Why have you filled the entire notebook with drawings of Sylvette,
with all the anatomical details, and you haven't used even a hint
of color? Sylvette has blonde hair, a blushing face and breasts,
beautiful blue-grean eyes .."
" In my opinion, color is not important". Pablo responded.
Francesco Del Drago left him forever.
Picasso had painted GUERNICA without color; only grays, blacks
and whites.
Del Drago, on the other hand, had dedicated his life, since childhood,
to color.
Before becoming recognized as one of the major colorists of our
century, he had studied in depth the use of color by the ancients,
by contemporaries, by nature and in scientific texts.
For twenty years he has analyzed the paintings of Tiziano, Rubens,
Monet, Renoir, Bonnard and Matisse, he caught their secrets and
techniques to such an extent that he was able to bring to light
a new style, a revolutionary style, advancing over the old one,
as it is noted among the experts, such as Nello Ponente of the
University of Rome and Jean Rudel of the University of Paris.
"He changed the data of contemporary painting" (M. Servers, Conservateur
des Musées de Villefranche-sur-mer, 1993).
In the lecture he held in Europe, in Russia and in China, Francesco
Del Drago has progressively perfected his chromatic discoveries,
documenting them with constantly developing works of art.
The artistic course followed by Del Drago with much success finds
many admirers.
Our Nobel Prize winner for Poetry, Salvatore Quasimodo, defined
Del Drago "One like many, dream maker".
Dreams that no words can describe because the art work and the
music of these paintings touch the deepest aesthetic sentiment
of human beings which can be better reached through non verbal
communication.
Enzo Coniglio - Italian Cultural
Institute of Los Angeles
In spite of the great success obtained in his personal exhibition
in 1950 and of being invited to participate in the Biennial
of Venice, Del Drago knows very well that he is not up to
date compared to the great masters of French painting of that
time. Therefore, after two periods spent in France in 1948 and
1950 he decided to live permanently in Paris from 1951.
He will start a period of intense work in the museums and the
studios of the major painters of that time, taking inspiration
here and there, to elaborate his own views.
He meets Picasso and Leger masters of form, and studies in depth
the Impressionists and Bonnard, Duty and Matisse masters of color.
He works with Harbin, Dewasne's geometrical abstractors; makes
friend with Matta, the youngest and the most clever of Surrealists.
He becomes a good friend of Edouard Pignon: they often work together.
Francesco Del Drago tries to combine form and color abstraction
and figuration, he wants to overcome the animosity which in that
period divided painters in exclusive clans ferociously opposed.
He ignores Duchamp and his followers: the anti painters. Based
on all preceding discoveries, endowed
with very creative eclectism he arrives at extremely personal
results.
He is recognized, both by historians and art critics as one of
the best painter of our time. For more
than 25 years he has worked exclusively on his own discoveries
with method and with dialectic principles in a continuous progress.
Simona Rinaldi - University of
Macerata
