Marc Dalessio

This week my traveling painting group will be having our first exhibition in Munich. Our goal is to raise funds for the Myanmar Foundation and Interplast München, both of whose incredible work helping the people of Myanmar we witnessed on our trip there earlier this year. A beautiful gallery space has been donated for the show by the Dorotheum.

We also have a new website with examples of the work, short biographies of each of the artists, and a short film on the Myanmar Foundation.

Sulle Colline di Settignano, 1885

Leith, 1881

Continuing the theme of brilliant regional painters from the Californian school post below. There is a Telemaco Signorini show in Padua at the moment which I am really looking forward to seeing. Signorini has always been one of my favorite plein air painters both for his superb painting technique and the wit he instills in his best work. Such as the play of the bright colors of the advertising billboard above contrasted with the greys and browns of the Scottish town, the lone dog on the wall in End of August at Pietramala below, and the contrasting of the various levels of human endeavor between the humble, transitory vegetable garden and the grand, immutable silhouette of the Duomo in (a painting I haven’t been able to find an image of and can’t remember the title!).

Fine d'agosto a Pietramala, 1889

Una Via di Ravenna

Signorini is probably the greatest painter of the Italian light, from the dirty summer skies contrasted with bright sun-lit roads, to his exceptional rendering of the long grey autumn and winter evenings. His draftsmanship is superb, and often in the small unfinished sketches you can see how everything was meticulously drawn in pencil before he started (Paxton recounted seeing Sargent do this as well with his seemingly freehand Venetian watercolors). Signorini’s brushwork and, often, palette-knife-work is always varied and unexpected, and I would be curious to know what medium he used as the variety of edge is really impressive, from the long soft gradations of the foliage and shadows, to his razor-sharp roofs and palm fronds.

Paesaggio Toscano, 1875

Also, the museums in Italy are all free this weekend. I just spent an hour looking at the Signorini at the Pitti Modern and was the only one in the place the whole time.

La Vuelta de la Pesca. Oil on linen, 265 x 325 cm, 1894.

The Prado Museum in Madrid is having a huge exhibition of Joaquín Sorolla until the 6th of September. With over 100 works from one of the greatest plein air painters ever, this is a show not to be missed.

I remember seeing a black and white photograph of Sorolla painting the above painting (or a version of it) on site, with a massive wooden wind-block built to protect the canvas. This type of large scale plein air work is something I think we don’t see enough of these days.

Triste Herencia (Sad Inheritance). 210 x 285 cm, 1899

Triste Herencia was in the 1900 show at the Guggenheim a few years back and it really came off as the best piece in the show (Sorolla’s massive painting of the ladies mending the sails was a close second). The ‘sad inheritance’ is the crippling syphilis these children were born with from mothers working as prostitutes. The contrast between the joyous colors of the children’s bodies in the sun and the inky dark of the sea and priest’s robes is brilliant. Such a poignant subject matter as well, and at the time I found it interesting to be touched by the lives of these children from such a long time ago.

The Exhibition page on the Prado website.

San Marcellino a Monti. Oil on linen, 2009, 70 x 54 inches.

I’m off for New York today and I’ll be away for three weeks, so most likely no blog updates. I did the catalog myself for my upcoming solo exhibition and exported a pdf if anyone would like to see it online (its just under 1 megabite). The show will be Tuscan landscapes from last year as well as a few of the sketches from Myanmar in February.

Chinthe of Lawkananda Paya. Oil on panel, 2009, 10 x 14 inches.

The set-up.

This week I had a professional photographic studio (Industrial Foto) come to photograph my latest paintings for a catalog. It was interesting to see their set up, and the results are so much better than what I can do with my Panasonic Lumix LX2. It was very expensive though, for a little more money I could have bought a new entry level DSLR. The photographers used a Hasselblad 555 ELD with an Imacon ixpress digital back. They explained that the cameras need to be upgraded less often than the digital processors, so this way they can upgrade each separately. The whole thing was hooked up to a Macbook Pro and everything was done from the computer (checking the light and releasing the shutter) with the proprietary Imacon software.

Industrialfoto running the shoot from a Macbook

They used artificial light and some of the photos came out with a yellow tint. I can color correct them myself but I would have preferred to work from the RAW camera files rather than the TIFFs they sent me.

For the internet the high-resolution photos really don’t make much of a difference, here is a side by side comparison between my little Panasonic and their system:

The Hasselblad is on the left, my Panasonic is on the right.

Leo and Josh with the model.

On Friday April 17th, Greg, Josh, Leo and I will be having an open studio in our beautiful 19th-century painting studio in Piazza Donatello. Everyone is welcome. You can pop by during the day to beat the crowds if you like, but let someone know you’re coming. Otherwise we’ll have fine wine and even better art from 18:00 onwards.

This week I have a few paintings in the BADA Antiques and Fine Art Fair in London with the old master dealer Constantine Lindsay. The Fair is held in the Duke of York Square in Chelsea (near Sloane Square) from the 25th to the 31st of March. The stand is A28, to the rear left of the fair as you walk in. More information on the BADA website.

Many of my better paintings from last year (as well as the Gstaad sketches from January) have gone into this show. You can see some of the work on Constantine’s website.

Leo and I will open the studio to the public on Friday afternoon from 1 pm to 8 pm. We will have nibbles and wine in the evening. The address is 31 Piazzale Donatello.

Everyone is welcome, but RSVP if you can so we have an idea of numbers.

Thanks to everyone who came, we had a huge turn-out. Everyone was very complimentary about the work and the space (and the wine), and we even managed to sell some paintings despite the fact you could barely move around inside the gallery. Below are some images from the evening, and the work can be seen on the Cami gallery website.

I wasn’t really drinking 3 glasses of wine at the same time.

Alba and Leo pose for our professional photographer.

The invitations have been mailed and the catalog should be printed by the end of the week. For my part all the paintings are ready and framed and waiting by the door.

The gallery has asked for 25 paintings, but most of the work I did this year is quite large, and I don’t think they can honestly fit it all. It will be nice to have too much work for a change and just show the best of it.

You can see the work on their website.