Natale Addamiano in public spaces

Natale Addamiano (Bitetto, 1943), after moving to Milan in 1968, attended the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera. In the early 70s he held his first solo exhibition at the Galleria Solferino in Milan, where he presented Diari notturni, artworks linked to the memory of Puglia, his birthplace. From 1976 to 2007, he worked as a professor of Painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, as well.

His artistic path is characterized by colors, that became the topic of his research, with the Gravine and with the Starry Skies.

And this year has been very challenging for Natale Addamiano, since in just six months he had the chance to be hosted in two historical and public locations: his art has travelled through Italy, enabling many people to get in touch with his fascinating and poetic starry skies.

Last April Villa Vertua Masolo in Nova Milanese, in fact, presented an evocative exhibition: Natale Addamiano e Pino Deodato. Raccontarsi sotto le stelle (from 28th April to 17th May 2019), curated by Matteo Galbiati.

The exhibition was a dialogue between two artists and their different ways to make art: starry skies of Natale Addamiano were compared with anthropomorphic sculpture of Pino Deodato (Nao, 1950), in an exchange of reciprocal lightness and dreamlike poetry, stimulating the viewer's imagination and wonder.

The Addamiano’s skies were not only a background for Deodato’s terracotta, but also a landing. In fact, since the sculptures symbolize humanity with its fears and bad habits, they could answer to their inner questions and find shelter in the celestial spheres of the painter.

The colors of starry skies in the canvasses, sometimes even improbable, provoke different feelings and emotions: Addamiano’s romanticism encourage the pursuit of happiness, going beyond reality in order to catch the essential truth and understanding the most intimate essence of human living.

This same poetic of Addamiano’s art played a leading role in the “Notte dei ricercatori” (“Researchers' Night”), which took place in Castellana last Friday, 27th September.

The “Notte dei ricercatori” is an event conceived by the European Commission and it aims to promote and raise public awareness on the topic of research. Since 2005, every year throughout Europe research institutes, museums and universities open to citizenship in order to communicate their activities and progress that science makes every day, thus bringing everyone closer to the world of research and stimulating debate.

And Natale Addamiano embraced the Castellana’s project with heartfelt enthusiasm.

Firstly, he curated an exhibition unique in its kind, as it was able to enjoy visitors with nature’s lights and colors not only thanks to pictorial projections on stalactites and stalagmites during the event of last Friday, but also thanks to the solo-show titled Natale Addamiano that will run at Museo Speleologico Franco Anelli through November 3rd, 2019 (the exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with a text by prof. Gianluigi Giannelli, scientific director the institute “Saverio De Bellis”).

So, Addamiano offered his art to the project itself: the artist’s fourteen artworks, some of which specifically realized, condense all researches he had done and celebrate glimpses of Puglia and of Grotte di Castellana as well.

Thanks to Addamiano’s canvases, we could perceive nature in all its magnificence, as a holy temple; his brushstrokes contribute to arouse a sense of depth, and the colors define and evoke wildlife’s sublime.

The caves are a place of silence, of suspension, under the dome of a dark blue sky quilted with sidereal lights, able to dialogue with stalactites.

Even the starry skies are a feast for our eyes, sometimes celestial spheres are flooded in a red sunset, in which the purple clouds capture our gaze, sometimes they are swarmed in a peaceful darkness.