SATURNO BUTTÓ

   

                                                Pietá

Read Interview http://cromoforalapalomaonlinegallery.blogspot.com.es/2014/07/saturno-butto-interviewed-by-paloma-de.html

SATURNO BUTTÓ, born in Venice in 1957, started his exhibition career in 1993, when he published his first monograph titled “portrayed from Saturn: 1989-1992”. Since then he’s exhibited in Italy, Europe and US (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco).
In addition to two other monographs "Works 1993-1999" and "Martyrologium" (2007), the Mondo Bizzarro Gallery in Rome at the recent exhibition has published his latest catalog in chronological order: "Blood is my favorite color" (2012).

Saturno Buttò’s artwork is characterized by a personal, formal interpretation of European sacred art and technical skill, that reminds one of the great masters of our pictorial tradition.
Figurative rituals, tableaux vivants, neo-Gothic altar pieces are the skillful creations with which Butto extracts the fascinating mysteries of an "obscure, dark religion. This concept is brilliantly illustrated by the juxtaposition between the body’s innate sensuality and its deeper spirituality. Through illustrating the conflict between eroticism and pain, transgression and rapture, Buttò’s valuable paintings on wood examine in depth the strict and conflicting vision of Western religious iconography by comparisons with the body. The body is, on one side exhibited like an object of cult, while simultaneously being denied its value of nascent erotic beauty. It’s a fascinating tension that above all exalts the human figure, to the centre of the exhibition.



The human figure, which in Buttò’s poem, is constantly represented as sacred, is depicted in its physical and psychological decadence. It is sometimes illustrated by instruments and/or medical tools, that represent human pain on one hand while simultaneously highlighting the will to defeat death in a Utopian way. It also manages to vividly depicts the inescapable condition of physical decline, more accurately than ever.
This way, a beautiful girl’s parade consecrate from a golden halo, as the Byzantine icons, shine from a lively and sensual physicalness, but are hidden from a mysterious demoniac fascination, as if they were wedded in purity to destruction and decay.