Leoluca Orlando
Mayor of Palermo
A homage to a passionate, cultured, multifaceted artist. In this exhibition Alfonso Leto revealshim self as an interpreter of the human condition, as someone able to interrogate it, unafraid of performing readings, reinterpretations, transgressions. Once again the work of the Sant’Elia Foundation poses a question to its audience, opening up the intellectual and emotional space for us to look for our own answers. Here Leto chooses to dare, and he chooses to do so in the year in which – asItalian capital of culture 2018 – Palermo shows off its multicultural spirit, full of poetic contaminations and of beautiful contradictions.
Andrea Cusumano
City councilman, for Culture of the Municipality of Palermo
In the year of culture, Palermo celebratesa great Sicilian painter with an exhibition that charts the course of hiscareer, displaying works from different moments and made with different creative origins. Leto is capable of being at once monumental and intimate, sophisticated and pop, pictorial yet sculptural, deeplyrooted in the material yet also glossy on the surface. A truly majestic art ist who moves nonchalantly between forms and methods, like a modern-day Luca Giordano; at the same time, wecan always discern a cultured inspiration through his technical eclecticism, just as we can detect the raggedness of genius, constantly on the hunt for solutions. In truth, Leto is at play: he plays with his pictorial toys. He turns his easel into blue horses (perhaps a nod to Kandinsky’s Blaue Reiter?), he makes poeticand grotesque figures appear out of nothing on his canvas, he undoes painting’s supremacy by collapsing it intothe space of the installation, as in thecase of the four unmounted canvases dangling from a rope. And yet despitethese experiments, Leto never allows technical mastery to take over, keeping it as an instrument at the service of the full-bodied flow of his creative invention. He is an ironic, dry artist, but his ultimate reason for operating lies beyond,in the joy of living and of marvelling at the world. And thus, his painting is ultimately mimesis: it replicates the vortex of life and the creativity that makes possible its regeneration.
Calogero Pumilia
President of the Orestiadi Foundation
The exhibition “Alfonso Leto.
Selected works 1997-2017” curated by MarcoMeneguzzo, is a gift from the Orestiadi Foundation to the city of Palermo, to Sicily and to its visitors, of the works of an artist whose practice adheres fully tothe best contemporary aesthetics. A precursor of some of the most stimulating directions of artistic research, Leto has been a long time participant in the Foundation’s activities,to which he has made significant contributions.
“Leto against method”, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva twenty years ago, confirmed the artist as a restless, cultured and passionate exponent of painting, who rejected established rules and tenets in favour of a constant search for new modes of expression.Through his use of shape, line and colour, Leto has over the years produced an impactful and refined body of work, with paintings which have won the favour of national critics and been considered amongst the best expressions of contemporary art.
Leto began his collaboration with the Foundation and with Ludovico Corrao by curating the first Gibellina art collection, and has continued tomake a valuable contribution to the Foundation’s work ever since.
Setin the prestigious space of Palazzo Sant’Elia, this exhibition furthers the Orestiadi Foundation’s commitment in the year of Palermo Capital of Culture and of Manifesta. One of Sicily’s most important cultural institutions thus contributes to the success of two initiatives that crown the capital as one of the most lively cities in Europe and in the Mediterranean.
The exhibition “Pausa Sismica” [Seismic Break] marked fifty years since the Valledel Belice earth quake, the awful tragedy that the city of Gibellina turned into a magnificent opportunity by rebuildingitself in the name of beauty and art. Now, the availability of Leoluca Orlando, Andrea Cusumano and Antonio Ticali has allowed the Orestiadi Foundation to persist in its dedication to promoting contemporary art in its most stimulating and exciting forms. The works of Alfonso Leto on display here resonate fully with this commitment.