ALFONSO RAGONE
Alfonso was born in Salerno in 1961 and grew up in Palinuro, where he remains living and working till this date.
He began to paint at an early age. Initially he worked as a decorator for local public places, such as restaurants and bars.The first commissions of his paintings were mainly family portraits or reproductions of famous paintings, along with other subjects. During the 90's, after many years of working for others, he decided to stop his workshop and began painting for himself. The canvases are typically pictorial media of his interests for contemporary and classical art, where there is normally a portrait, or other different painting styles with a focus on realism. In his latest works, a series of ten paintings of black and white portraits, each recall the old photos of famous people. Three paintings are dedicated to Francis Bacon at different stages of his life: a young man, an adult and a senior, all strictly painted in black and white.
Therefore a personal interpretation of art, hidden till now which conserves treasures and insights into his personal journey and stimulates a dream of a new reality of his own. As much as it may seem pointless to ignore, Alfonso's personal debts to his predecessors, famous artists which won't be mentioned here, who like many, are his personal cultural baggage from which he takes ideas and inspiration.
It's manifestation, a reinterpretation according to his tastes and artistic characteristics of the time in which he painted. The portrayed subjects, consumed by thousands of artists since the prehistoric ages but which continue to evolve and remain focal centre pieces of art during every stage of its development, come together to represent a sort of evolutionary documentation of the time we live in.
And as Bacon once said "I think art is an obsession with life and after all, as we human beings, our greatest obsession is with ourselves. Then followed possibly with animals, then with landscapes afterwards."
