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The Art of Vito M. Pinto
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Fine Art Connoisseur - Focus Magazine Interview synopsis: By Zhanna Veyts: Today, a medium-build Italian man, mid-forties, clean-shaven, with well-manicured hands, sits in the recessed corner—my regular spot—at my regular spot, a cappuccino café on 10th and 1st Ave. Illuminated by dim light emanating from a loose fixture, he rustles through papers in a light brown, leather briefcase. He wears a crisp, starched-collared shirt and waits for the waitress to remove the emptied espresso cup from the otherwise polished tabletop. Instead, I show up, sit at the table next to his, and begin to take out my tape recorder, notepad, pen. I am expecting a scruffy bohemian to interview, and am banking on the smell of turpentine to identify him. But, as I begin to review my notes, I spot a hint of color, not unlike the reds and greens I reviewed the night before, inside his case. I turn to ask, “Are you Vito Pinto?” and a look of relief settles over the man’s face. “Yes. I didn’t know whom to expect,” he says, almost as an apology. But his mild manner tells me he is not the type to be surprised by surprises. He mentions that as an immigrant, that’s the most practical thing he’s learned. And then he takes out the portfolio and suggests that we get down to business.
Zhanna Veyts: As an artist with an Italian background, your work seems fundamentally rooted in the classical exploration of the body as form. Tell me about your beginnings as a painter? Vito M. Pinto: Before I came to the US, I went to art school in Italy, in Naples . I went for one year and we did mostly life drawing and things like that. Then we moved and I couldn’t afford art school. I went to paint sets for theatre shows, Kiss Me Kate, that kind of thing. And one day, when I had to mix the paints, the red, blue, yellow, I started seeing swirls. And then the first splash of a volcano of primary colors. I couldn’t stop. I was so excited. I had never been so excited about anything. So, I went home and I took a canvas and I started to splash paint on it. The lines went in every possible direction. Different combinations of color. The volcano erupting and exploding.
ZV: Maybe it was the volcano you lived next to as a kid in Naples . VP: It could have been. I took the pictures to show a teacher at an art school and he said, ‘oh, they are like Jackson Pollock.’ I said, ‘Who?’ It was 1975. I didn’t know who he was. I was just painting what came to me. I thought it was original because it was natural. I have to say, I was a little disappointed that day.
ZV: But you recovered. In your earlier works there is so much contrast and conflict, but later the compositions really start to come together. VP: When I look at the older paintings, in the splashes and drips, I see my figures. They are there. Subconsciously, they are there.
ZV: And how did you make the leap from that work to your next, realist, painting style? VP: I kept painting and the forms came out. This is my first big painting. It is called Metamorphosis. It is about all of the biggest changes in my life up until that point. It took me three years (?) to complete. The details, all the details, had to be there. For which reason? I had to express all the emotions I felt thorough the change and even the ones I could not explain. Take this woman for instance. She is pregnant. It was like something that I saw before it happened. Deeply personal. And I had to put it in there. And then this painting, the details here, gave birth to all the other paintings.
ZV: Stylistically, do you see a divide between realism and abstraction? VP: Not really, they are both forms of expressionism just different in style. The whole thing [Metamorphosis] is very abstract, but if you look closely, there are figures. There are birds, and their bodies make up other birds. They came out. All These things come out by themselves. I don’t have any sketches or anything; I just paint. Whatever I feel, I then see it. I feel that you can close your eyes, and make a scribble, and the scribble that you will make is the same scribble that you would have if you had your eyes open. You always have the same forms, over and over, the same figures. In my paintings, most of the forms are very abstracted and round. There are no straight lines. Because I am attracted to round forms.
ZV: Your paintings remain uniquely passionate, visceral…almost an ongoing dance. What is your process of beginning a painting? VP: I generate a scene in my mind, while I am working—it’s not premeditated, it’s while I’m working—which depends on the mood. I don’t do sketches or prepare, I just paint.
ZV: And do you set out with a title in mind, also? VP: It just comes. Like in this one, Into the Light, there’s the dark and the light, a contrast, positive and negative, one does not exist without the other. It is about my divorce. And you see a man, coming toward the light and leaving his attachment, the woman, behind. The other forms split like flowers, always moving and growing toward the light. Pursuing detachment and other goals.
ZV: The subjects in your paintings seem deeply personal. Do you often get a chance to talk about your work with the people who end up owning it? VP: Not a lot, I don’t do a lot of promotion. The lady that bought Toward the Light, she had gone through divorce, lost her parents, and had just started a new business venture when I told her about the painting, about the detachment and the pursuit to achieve new goals, she saw herself in it and bough it on the spot, just from seeing a picture of it.
ZV: And how do you detach from the paintings? Do you try to keep in touch with the works? VP: In the beginning I didn’t, though I didn’t know how, I would try. Now I keep track of exhibitions, because I found that there were some that I had forgotten. Brochures would turn up and I’d say, ‘oh, I should add that to the list.’
ZV: Does it frustrate your painting to have to keep track of the commercial element? VP: Oh, yeah, definitely. The artist likes to paint. He doesn’t like to promote himself. I don’t. There are some out there that are very good. Dali- and I extremely admire them for their creativity and showmanship and believe it or not their eccentricity.
ZV: That’s ego. That’s mania. VP: --Peter Max. He loves showing himself in public and the attention. I don’t and it’s just my low-key personality as my paintings are very emotional, very personal.
ZV: They guide you, instead of you guiding them… VP: It is like a maze. Like the maze in the big painting. Because in life, sometimes, you might be wondering where you are and who you are and what your goals are, so you see life as a maze and you are looking for the right direction and that is when the spiritual part takes over and you reinforce your spirit by believing. But this only came out concretely in the large painting.
ZV: Do you think that this painting is still continuing to give birth to new paintings? VP: Oh, yes. That painting was the beginning of my new style. Now they represent me but these forms were created out of nothing. Now these are the forms I use to express my inner feelings and Life experiences.
ZV: Do you see your paintings as a meditation on nature? VP: Nature, yes, and also human feelings. Mostly human feelings. Take The Voyage. This is the only time you will see faces. This figure is me, the artist. He has one of his first surrealistic painting hanging over his heart titled “The choice”. He has replaced the void with his passion, his art. The head is deformed depicting the state of mind, the pain and the suffering. And there, in the dark background is, also a skull, fear for the unknown. I paint things as they are in my mind. I don’t touch them to change them. I work around them. Above me is the lake, it looks like a lake but it is really is a sea. I purposely painted as such to shorten the distance from one country to the other as I travel there often and keep a tight connection to my Mother Land. And. Of course, well hidden in the clouds you have the shapes of the US and Italy….Remember, I am the last Italian immigrant… I believe I was brought here to leave a mark, to achieve my personal goals but I also believe in destiny. I believe you can change destiny up until a certain time, but once life has taken its course…
ZV: Would you say that you are an optimist or a pessimist? VP: Definitely an optimist. I make something fun or I don’t make it. But like I said, negative does not exist without the positive. Positive does not exist without the negative. “The balance of Life”.
ZV: You’ve commented on our society being “an image saturated world”. Can you expand on that and then comment on how it affects you as an environment for your art? VP: I try to be as original as possible, without being influenced by other artists.
ZV: So, you shut it out? VP: I shut it out. I totally shut it out. I don’t look at anything for references. I just look at the canvas and paint. Without even thinking. And once I start painting, I just have fun.
ZV: So you don’t really see a divide between the conception and the perception? VP: It develops as I go along. I can make a swirl on a piece of paper and after a few minutes I start seeing things and I take off with that. The objective in my painting is to have the pure interpretation. For every viewer, their own personal interpretation based on the way that it affects them.
ZV: Do you ever find that the viewer’s interpretation actually intersects with your own? VP: Sure. In The Voyage there is a small reptile on my shoulder, here, because, like the volcano, it symbolizes where I came from. It symbolizes my childhood because Italy is overrun with…lizards. I showed this painting to another Italian, not an American, an Italian, and I looked at his face and then he looked and looked and then pointed to it and said, ‘That reminds me of when I was a kid!’ Boom.
ZV: Are you comfortable with a different interpretation as well? VP: Of course, yes, as long as it takes someone in some direction, which direction doesn’t matter.
ZV: So, how do you know when the painting is done? VP: How do I know? I look at the painting and I know. When you look at the painting and all of your thoughts, no, not your thoughts, your objectives as an artist are achieved. When the all the elements in the artwork pull together successfully towards the same direction of the subject.
ZV: Do you ever discard paintings that you think are unsuccessful? VP: No. I think every painting has a meaning. Some of the works, when I was young, I painted over. But that was because I couldn’t afford new canvasses. But, everything is connected. Every moment in your life has meaning.
“Every beginning has an ending and every ending has a new beginning” (VMP) |
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