Melty’s Oil Paintings Capture the Dramatic Beauty of New York

Empire State Building at sunset. Al images courtesy the artist and Barbara Frigerio Gallery, Milano

Thick strokes of oil paint blend with the occasional burst of twilight color, transforming New York, Chicago, and other major urban cities into hazy, time-lapse visions. The pictorial series of the Italian artist Valerio D’Ospina depicts crowded places with a brooding romance tempered by the desolation of navigating a big city alone. Each painting is an honest depiction of a growing metropolis whose expansive grid system and congested airspace are both tranquil and ravishingly beautiful. Each painting is noticeably devoid of human life except for a few moving vehicles, resulting in paintings of an objective yet poetic city system.

D’Ospina frequently forgoes colors to build visions that don’t emit the hum of human energy, but the hiss instead of a breeze passing between skyscrapers. He brings a wealth of experience to his art, having studied at the respected Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, where he established a firm grasp on the technical skills of Old Master painting, and eventually pursued a teaching degree at the same time. time. institute. D’Ospina also spent time developing his teaching skills at Indiana University in Pennsylvania and working in an antique painting restoration workshop in his native Italy.

Via the Barbara Grigerio gallery, the artist shares her method of using “the brushstroke, fast and dynamic, [to] rewrite the profiles of buildings, skyscrapers, favoring verticality.

D’Ospina displays his expert hand in depicting most of his cities from an aerial perspective and treating his subjects as the architectural stunners that they truly are. The artist says he focuses on portraying “”a landmark of the city, “often New York, looming [over] man but that he himself wants to dominate [by] Kissing him with his eyes, but he remains distant, impassive and inscrutable.