Archive for September, 2007

FoundFuton: Paintings by Saturno Butto

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007

butto2

see more work here

BIO (as seen on on his official site):
Figurative rituals, living tablets, neo-gothic alters for the mysteries of an obscure religion – The critic has indulged his whim in finding definitions that give an idea to the paintings of Saturno Buttò, Venetian, born in Portogruaro in 1957.

He enrolled in the Artistic High School of Venice in 1971, and thereafter to the academy of fine arts, receiving his diploma for painting in 1980. If one excludes the decade related to study, Saturno never left Bibione, small Venetian city alongside the sea, where he lives and works.

The artist always sustained with conviction the importance given from the Venetian experience for his formation; the high school started him in classic design and has highlighted what has always been his calling: illustration. This was a period of continuous pencil on paper work, for which there were no variations to the rigorous monochromaticism of the drawings. Only a timid appearance (in the last year of high school) of a coating in watercolors, maybe a prelude to the more vivacious climate of the academy and one in which Saturno benefited after his artistic graduation in 1976.

Paradoxically it was just that atmosphere of total liberty of expression that convinced him to abandon, even if only temporarily, pencils and brushes in favor of ‘new techniques” like film, photography, and various experiences tide to the latest art forms most in fashion in those days, which were Body Art and Conceptual Art…

The interest for the human element though, did not change. If he had to experience it under lock and key in high school, he lived in a prevailingly in an objective-anatomical note, with the academy the research was moved on to the subject, on the character and its psychological implications. The “fusion” of the two experiences determined starting from 1980 (the year the traditional artistic technique returned), the line that characterizes, even long after, all of Saturno’s artwork: A painting of strong realistic impact, based on design and imprinted in the theme of the portrait. The successive decade was a constant search for perfecting the technique of oils that would be interpreted with personal pleasure and that will lead him to the unique style of the tablets of the 90’s. In 1993 he exhibited for the first time in public and publicized the monographic catalog “Portraits of Saturno 1989-1992″.