ART SALON

The Comics Journal

A TCAF Tip

BY Jeet Heer May 4, 2012

As Tom Spurgeon notes, TCAF is an ideal occasion to enjoy not just a superb comics festival but also a great city. So here’s a tip for Toronto visitors who want to see a little bit more of the city’s culture, while also enjoying a  comics-related jaunt: take some time out to go to the Tony Calzetta exhibit at the De Luca Fine Art Gallery (217 Avenue Road – about a ten minute walk from the main TCAF building).

Calzetta cartoons on the canvas, which puts him in a now venerable tradition of comics-inspired painters. Unlike Roy Lichtenstein, Calzetta doesn’t do cool, detached appropriations of illustration images from romance comics or war comics. Rather, Calzetta is closer in spirit to Philip Guston, doodling with his paint brush to evoke the warm, scribbly free-spirited iconic forms of early 20^th comic strips. But where Guston’s stubbly, cluttered paintings called to mind the slightly-claustrophobic world of Mutt and Jeff, Calzetta’s open  spaces and bold colors evoke the antic play of George Herrimans’s Krazy Kat.

Having spent a happy afternoon with Calzetta’s paintings, Herriman was never far from mind. Partially it was a matter of capering shifty shapes that are never content to settle down but are always transforming themelves before your eyes – the stumps that could be elephant feet or steep desert mountain, the upside down umbrella which could also be a ship or a mushroom, the trees that weirdly have branches growing at right angles making them at times look like chimneys with blowing smoke. Herriman’s also present in the way Calzetta stages his paintings – often putting a not-quite-rectangular border within the painting itself, calling to mind Herriman’s play with panels and placing of his characters in a proscenium theatre within the strip (and indeed in earlier painting Calzetta placed his images within a proscenium theatre). And of course, there are the colors – often circus bright in the foreground but set against a darker background.

Beyond all these surface similarities, there is also the feel of Calzetta’s work. Like Herriman, he’s an artist who makes me cheerful even when the work deals mournful themes of loss and separation. The joy that these artists provoke is not a naive pleasure and doesn’t come from the denial of pain. Rather, they have the special gift of returning art in its primordial roots of childhood play even as they grapple with adult concerns.

To say that Calzetta is a Herriman-esque artist is very high praise, but I think anyone who sees his work will realize that he deserves it.

(Calzetta’s paintings will be available for viewing on Friday May 4th and Saturday May 5th).

originally posted:
http://www.tcj.com/a-tcaftip/

Art Show by Tony Calzetta

"Bob Was Quite Leary of the Jibber Jabber Jimmys" by Tony Calzetta

DURATION:

April 14th - May 5th, 2012
 

RECEPTION:
April 14th, 2012 

4:00 - 9:00 p.m.

R.S.V.P. or please click here!

T: (1) 416-537-4699

PREVIEW OF SHOW BY APPOINTMENT:  

April 11, 12 & 13

217 Avenue Road

Toronto, Ontario M5R 2J3 

Tony Calzetta

 April 14th - May 5th, 2012

"Untitled #863" 2011, 22 x 30 inches, charcoal on paper

  

RECEPTION:

 
April 14th, 2012  

4:00 - 9:00 p.m. (rsvp requested)

217 Avenue Road, Toronto, Ontario M5R 2J3  

T: (1) 416-537-4699

  ________________________________________________

Over the past 35 years Tony Calzetta has developed a distinctive visual language of bold, simplified forms where colour, texture and lines jump into a third dimension and dance to life to create works that challenge the viewer’s imagination.
As Kate Regan wrote in her essay Tony Calzetta: Line Dancing, “it was Paul Klee who wrote of taking a line for a walk to see where it would go. In the same spirit, Calzetta invites his lines to spin, zoom, fly, gesticulate and toddle.”
This important exhibition of major works, Calzetta’s first in five years, is a new collection of large scale canvasses and drawings.
Tony Calzetta received his B.F.A. from the University of Windsor and his M.F.A. from York University. He works mainly on canvas and paper and at times in sculpture and printmaking. He has published three major livres d’artiste, Acts of Kindness and of Love in collaboration with writer John Metcalf, and more recently How God Talks in His Sleep and Other Fabulous Fictions and Peculiar Practices with writer Leon Rooke. In addition to commissioned works he is represented in public, corporate and private collections in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. In 2011, his paintings exhibited at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Toronto were part of the Padiglione Italia at the 54 th International Venice Biennale. He was elected as a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) in 2004.
Tony Calzetta says: “My work is about drawing. The drawing is about images that are composed of shapes and forms constantly evolving from a highly personal visual vocabulary which started with subconscious doodling and automatic drawing and later from more conscious visual influences. My work can be viewed as “abstract funnies” or “surreal cartoons” which fit somewhere between high art and popular culture. My interest is with image as image and I believe in letting the viewer interpret and create his or her own narrative.”

54TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION – VENICE BIENNALE

Monday, June 06, 2011 - Sunday, November 27, 2011

AT THE 54TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION – VENICE BIENNALE

PADIGLIONE ITALIA  

WORKS BY TONY CALZETTA, VINCENZO PIETROPAOLO, FRANCESCA VIVENZA

The Italian Cultural Institute is proud to present Padiglione Italia at the 54th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. On display works by Tony Calzetta, Vincenzo Pietropaolo, Francesca Vivenza.

June 6 – November 27, 2011

Istituto Italiano di Cultura 496, Huron St., Toronto

Gallery hours Mon - Fri: 2:30pm - 4:30pm

Free admission

Infoline: 416-921-3802 ext. 221

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities have launched a special event. For the first time ever the Padiglione Italia at the 54th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale has been extended over the national boundaries to include the Italian Cultural Institutes in the world.
  

The aim of the project, which has been devised by Vittorio Sgarbi, art director of Padiglione Italia, is to map out Italian creativity abroad.

Each Institute has elected a number of Italian artists or artists of Italian descent living and working in its own jurisdiction, active in various disciplines, from painting to sculpture, photography, video, design, graphics. Over 400 artists’ portfolios have been submitted to a special commission made up of art historians and critics and chaired by Vittorio Sgarbi and 219 have been chosen.

The artists selected for Toronto are Tony Calzetta, Vincenzo Pietropaolo, Francesca Vivenza.

A collective exhibition of their works will be on display from June 6 until the end of the Venice Biennale, November 27 at the Institute. The exhibition has been filmed in a video which will be screened at the Padiglione Italia on a multimedia installation created by Benedetta Miralles Tagliabue. The accompanying music, “Da Pitagora e oltre”, has been composed for the occasion by Ennio Morricone. The exhibition has been curated by Adriana Frisenna (IIC Acting Director) and Corrado De Luca, (from De Luca Fine Art Gallery)


A special bilingual catalogue edited by Skira and curated by Francesca Valente (project coordinator) will accompany the exhibition.

Tony Calzetta
Over the last 30 years, since graduating from York University with an M.F.A., Tony Calzetta has exhibited continually in solo and group exhibitions. He works mainly on canvas and paper and occasional in the areas of sculpture and printmaking. He published two major livres d’artiste, Acts of Kindness and of Love in collaboration with writer John Metcalf, and more recently How God Talks In His Sleep and Other Fabulous Fictions with writer Leon Rooke. In addition to commissioned works he is represented in public and private collections in Canada, U.S. and Europe and in 2004 was elected as a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (R.C.A.).

Vincenzo Pietropaolo is an independent documentary photographer who lives and works in Toronto. He is internationally best known for his empathetic social documentary photo essays on immigration, work, and labour movement. He has published 8 photographic books, among which Making Home in Havana, Not Paved with Gold and Harvest Pilgrims. His latest large documentary project, Invisible No More (Rutgers University Press, 2010), deals with Canadians with intellectual disabilities.

Francesca Vivenza graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, Milan, Italy. Vivenza has been living and working in Toronto since1970, and has exhibited since 1966. Her practice consists of mixed-media works, which include bookworks, cut-out collages and site-specific installations, that she calls Tentative Itineraries. Vivenza addresses themes of travel, distance, disorientation, and questions the stability of taken-for-granted sites of personal identity as home, nation and native language. 

For additional information regarding this event and/or our services, consultation, and art rental program please visit www.delucafineart.com/ or follow us on www.twitter.com/delucafineart