Personality

Tony Priolo is considered as one of the most talented and prestigious among living painters, as well as a great expert in graphic art, in water colour and miniature painting He has been defined "pictor mirabilis", "apostle of art" "poet of the brush work", "artist knowing the elements of the most modern and advanced painting".
He shows a particular intuition in the palette research his art is a continuous dynamic movement, an art conceived as experience inside creativity, with an avant-guard use of different techniques,always in syntony with our changing times.
The fundamental steps of his graphic and painting universe are the following:
1° graphic art period: "Figure reading the newspaper" , "Landscape", "Young man sitting from the back" , "Violin player"
2° graphic art period: "Dynamic figure" , " Landscape", "Actors of a tales world".
"Some of Priolo's works remind us, with freshness of interpretation, to the graphic exploits of Cagli's works accentuating his expressive dynamism in a singular meeting of two alternative moments of artistic speculation" - S. Giannattasio. "His pleasant sign allows us to interpret contemporary problems studied by the hidden harmonies of the brush stroke, reaching chromatic intensities through the returning of reality's contents, where the artistic sensitivity, becoming the experience of all preceding experiences, produces a rare and excellent optic and scenic meaning". L. Carli. Pastel Indian ink drawings - "Guitar player walking " "Two women talking in the street", "Interior with still-life and smokers". Pastels on bread-paper "The large basket and the running horse"; classical period "The cardinal" "Waiting", "Curls".
"Priolo is determined to reach a complete intensity of feelings and emphasis in every work" - D. Bellezza. About Nativity - " ... it's brightening like the answer of the centuries and it's the same light guiding the spectator to the pictorial research that in Priolo attracts like a legend where the centuries continue to sail and where mountains and incorporated faces, blue and golden colours expand, crowding the hours". - T. Pallitta. "Virgin with the child" "Crucifixion", "Deposition".
Beginning of global expressionism: "Luna Park", "Dynamic figures in present imagination in a continuity of time, space, light", "... that reveals an ideal comparison with Pollock" - P. Bertozzi.
And "Like in a dream I saw Emanuela Orlandi being kidnapped", "...the picture is a cluster of winding ravines a strenuous research, an impossible way" - N. Pericoli. He goes through the post informal monumentalism in "Warrior in S. Peter's Square". He invents the "UL" art (linear unity) as harmony of lines: the work "Doll in braids", "offers us a delicious mosaic" - N. Pericoli; "Two sages" "is one of the highest quality and most interesting Priolo's works"
S. Giannattasio.
"Civilisation" and "Man turning into a cock", ".. until today nobody had thought of deliberately creating and building situations of dynamism and complementary colours throughout chromatic research" - L. Carli. In 1982 he starts using water painting technique and unti 1990 he produces the collection-exhibition "Jewels of water painting" among which "Enigma of life", "Passions of the city" "Landscape", "... mystery of the light coming from infinite spaces to stop on a finite picture" - N. Pericoli "Landscape and moving figures", "Guitar player with parrots" "...these are Tony Priolo's water paintings: they vibrate of their own light coming out from a nearly impalpable I would say transparent matter that composes them and they assume, through the animating colours, values and meanings, forms and contents, stillness and dynamism. An apotheosis of colours, now tenuous and soft, now intense and vaporous, making this artist an extraordinary executo with high qualities and a very original style. Tony Priolo can be defined the greatest living water painter" - Mauritius. He develops miniature painting in various moments the first work is "Aldo Moro in the legend", 305 miniatures similar to stamps, divided into 33 tablets, re-evoking the tragic event. - "... it isn't the simple transfiguration of a known reality, but the expression of a deep unconscious primordia strength urging to tell other dimension knowledge"
N. Pericoli
Modular monochromies among which : "The flight into Egypt" "... the three wayfarers of the Gospel seem iced candelabrums"- M. T. Palitta. In "Apotheosis" and "Myth" "he demonstrates to have the instruments for a high quality expression" - S. Giannattasio.
In march 1987, from Montopoli di Sabina, Tony Priolo launches the "Manifesto of existential trans-futurism" stating the need to free the whole mankind from modern evils: violence, terrorism, social injustice, blackmails, vices drugs. It's a message for the welfare of nations, for social justice, freedom, universal peace. The Manifesto was spread by ANSA as literary historical document on March 23 of the same year.
In 1990-91 there's an intermediate and pre-romantic period among his works there's "The innkeeper, landlady", - ". the figure appears in a purity of lines, it's an enchantment of simplicity, and freshness: a female image, a young girl moving softly, whose wide eyes communicate an intense and suggestive language.
She shines in harmony with environment and nature thanks to skilful effects of nuances and warm and delicate shades, in a well organised brightness where the richness of attractive particulars describes a rare grace and the enchantment of beauty, the woman's mysterious and seducing charm" - "Bowed head man resting and dog licking his hand", "The stakhanovite" ("... an attentive and full of suggestion picture; the author analyses a new dimension that is inside the same man belongs to him, to his expression and of course to his creativity and energy" - L. Carli.).

In may 1991 in Rieti he presents the document of second romanticism - a message to mankind to find joy of living in harmony with Creation. A better world where social justice, brotherhood, love among peoples, goodness freedom and peace exist in a still wild, enchanting and mysterious nature.
Works of the romantic period: "Shepherd with flock and landscape", "Rural concert with dance", "Show" "Landscape", "Golgotha", "Motherhood in the country and shepherd resting on his crook", "Rest" - "...Tony Priolo's painting elaborates a fleeting reality with hidden aspects in a new way. Surprisingly real effects of shadows and lights are wonderfully carried out. They announce the research of dynamism. His magic universe forecasts an art where man is free" - A. Vanoli, historian and critic of French art.
Then the period of nudes: "The two halves", "Historical digressions in front of a Monna Lisa's nude". The "Still-life with chairs and three bottles" - "...rich of chromatic suggestions, three hypnotising green bottles toning down to light blue and to yellow, an ash-coloured fruit dish, a plate of figs, a jug, a bunch of grapes, and as background a night sky, an unexpected explosion of glares blazes and lashes of light - is it a fire? a dying sunset? That far light pours into the room making the table surface colours change and is reflected on the objects surfaces Behind the appearances of a traditional still-life, Priolo has created a really original and fascinating work" - P. Bertozzi "Sill-life and flying knight", "Interior with still-life three oranges book glass grapes".
Starting of the intense fairy-like tone-intimist period with important studies among which: "The three sages" "Smile", "Red beret", "Dull notes" - composition. "Three dogs fighting for a bone", "Curiosity", "Interior with sitting woman and dog with a bone", "Sitting man with hat and cigarette" - "... there is an indefinite anxiety and melancholy in these last works, the same sensation that is perceived in Picasso's characters of pink and blue periods, on the eve of the first world war, in De Chirico's ones among the two wars and in Scipione's works of the sad thirties" - A. Arconti. Then he follows abstractionism in the period he calls "perpetual motion of thought" with the works: "Anxiety of two protagonists" and "Waltz of emotions". Then there is the dichromatic abstractionism period "Guitar concert for few friends", "Farmer's family anxious about the parturient woman".
Then the indefinite sign and colour of "barao" painting realised on newspaper sheets : "Arlecchino touching the lady's bottom", "Guitar player left by his woman's incredulous eye", "Careless motherhood", "Homage to Nicolas Green, angel of the bells".
About "barao" painting Tony Priolo says: "... it's mysterious and of great joy and satisfaction to be going to perceive the beats of a new artistic expression. "Barao" painting has given me this sensation ... everything seems to be, or rather is, existential chaos... the picture rotates indefinitely, irrationally, vaguely, in the discontinuity of signs, until by means of colours one searches the light that feeds hope in life and things, in ideas, facts, ways of being; through colours they acquire a rhythmic harmony turning into dream, emotion, thought, fantasy, into a new language painting. One finally gets to a global and abstract conceptualism of the work that is the most immediate, authentic and original essence of "barao" painting. "Inter dynamic 95" is another part of his work: development of painted image-letters; "The dance of hours" is a development of painted image-figures in miniature (UL art); "Didactic of design": 100 panels with 2000 drawings. These works belong to the miniature painting period the most recent, as well as the works of image psychology about present famous people.
There are also some limited edition volumes for collections entirely made by Priolo himself. Among these: "Giovanni Spadolini - Fifth dimension", "Norman Schwarzkopf" "Aldo Moro in the legend" (Indian ink and pastel) then "Sandro Pertini", "Alberto Moravia", "Enrico Berlinguer" "Pope Woityla", "Giulio Andreotti", mini sculpture of "Olof Palme" Then the sculpture "Praesepe 86", the bas-relieves "Woman 86", "Indifferent person"; the wooden sculptures "Venetian tourists", "Horse" then the "vague" art (from the Italian vagabondare): "Meeting on the hill", "Old man's head" (stone): He's lately developing portrait painting. He makes engravings he calls relief-lithographs, among which the author's proofs "The knights of the sun", "Mankind sailing in the sea of sun", "Dream".
From a critic essay by V. Margaritelli, 1983: "Tony Priolo has the great merit of teaching and confirming us how much beauty and truth is there in the world. We are lucky to benefit from his art and as interpreters of his message we relax and give ourselves to others, we feel a new strength and a new desire to know the language of forms and of colours that the various works created by his prestigious hand and made with a touching passion testify.
Plunging into Tony Priolo's world is like breathing pure air and being restored, it's believing and fortifying one's spirit..."
"....Tony Priolo has been able to exploit the gifts received by the divine spirit in order to give them back as token of love, freely and beyond contingency, towards the mankind, searching the essential good in life" - N. Pericoli.

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