Silvano D'ambrosio Biography
Born in France, where he recently returned, Silvano D'Ambrosio trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ravenna following mainly the engraving courses held by Tono Zancanaro in the two-year period 1974-76. In Forlì, in the 1980s, he inspired the Eclissi group which started a strong theoretical debate on art locally and was close to artists such as Enrico Lombardi, Alberto Mingotti (who also presented various of his exhibitions), Marco Neri and Stefano Gattelli with whom he participated to the events of neo-figuration. The group exhibited in 1985 at the Mascarella Gallery in Bologna, in 1987 at the Jack Shainman Gallery in Washington, in 1988 in New York and in 1990 in Venice. In 1996 the European Community organized a collective exhibition of the group at the Center Albert Borschette in Brussels. The personal exhibition at the Galleria il Polittico in Rome in 1996 opens up to a long series of national and international personal and collective exhibitions: Grenoble, Lyon, Lisbon, Beyrouth, Cairo and Turin in 1996; Belgrade, Sana'a, Brisbane, Melbourne and Rome in 1998. In 1999 he participated in the XII Quadrennial of Rome and in 2000 in "La Pittura Ritrovata 1978-1998" at the Risorgimento Museum in Rome. In 2001 he exhibited at the PAC in Milan and in 2002 and 2003 at Palazzo Reale in Milan: exhibitions “Sui generis – The redefinition of gender in the new Italian art” and “All the hatred of the world”. In 2007, again at Palazzo Reale in Milan, he participated in the collective exhibition “Arte Italiana 1968-2007. Painting” and in the same year at “Nuovi Realismi”, at the Contemporary Art Pavilion of the same city. Claudio Spadoni, Vittorio Sgarbi and Edward Lucie-Smith are repeatedly interested in his work. In 2007 he published two catalogues: “Vasi wounded”, a vast collection of still lifes dedicated to the theme of transience, and “Obscurum per obscurius” which collects oils on paper and drawings from 1985 to 2007. A subtle, mental and sophisticated artist, D 'Ambrosio was able to combine the metaphysics of everyday life with sacred themes and with a pervading sense of the inevitable dissolution of every manifestation of reality in an imaginary complex. An all in all neo-baroque poetic supported by a rare mastery of various expressive techniques that allow him to capture the restlessness of things and at the same time the wonder contained in every detail of a real, unstable and uncertain metamorphic.
