FERDINANDO AMBROSINO'S PAINTING OF SHADOWS AND DOUBTS

by Domenico Rea

A painter like Ferdinando Ambrosino, born in 1938, with a brief and long career, should be approached with caution. His paintings must be seen again and again and almost heard, for they all have a common matrix: the marine origin, inherited from the native land, Bacoli, epicentre and, we might say, epitome of a universe that was beaten, sounded, destroyed and rebuilt, from chaos to a continuous order, by the Phlegraean myth.

If this gigantic screen is not placed behind Ambrosino's canvases and behind his work against the light, one may easily fail to understand the reason for an important choice of the painter's. For, at a time of widespread conformism, despite having all the means, tools and technique, the painter refused to include in his range of themes fringes and sections of that art bristling with -isms and sophisms, of meanings all in the head – and insignficant. Thus he chose not to enter that exterminated army that has destroyed the canvas, colours and content, aiming at a “ruinography” that has fallen into widespread indifference.

This passage, this move tout court, with arms and baggage, into the other camp, well protected and launched on receptive markets, has never worried Ambrosino, born to painting at his own school. Ambrosino does not come from academic courses; he has had no masters, public or private.

After passing his maturità classica (in which no mention is made of the arts) and enrolling at the faculty of geology – a science that was to help him interpret his natural environment more deeply later on – to the young Ambrosino, painting appeared like a thunderbolt announcing his destiny, an indeferrable call and revelation on his little road to Damascus.

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