Costantino Di Renzo

He began his career in 1965 by attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. From the first years of his profession as a painter, he elaborates a careful research on the art of the past; in particular on the painting of the Dutch Vermeer, elaborating the images in a conceptual analysis. In 1974, he joined the hyperrealist movement, exhibiting his works at the Margutta gallery in Pescara (1976), the Il Modulo gallery in Salerno (1977).

In 1978 he went to the United States to deepen the technique of hyperrealism and attended the studios of artists Richard Estes, Don Eddy and Chuk Close. He comes into contact with the Borghi gallery in New York, where in 1979 he exhibited a series of works entitled: “New York, sphinx of cement, alluminium and mirrors” The militant critics deal with him: Duilio Morosini, Marcello Venturoli, Giuseppe Marchiori and others write about his painting. In 1975 and 1979 he took part in the XXIX and XXXIII “FP Michetti Prize”. Since 1980 he has dedicated himself to sculpture, exhibiting his works in 1982, at the Cesare Manzo gallery in Pescara and the Centro sei gallery in Bari. The sculptures he creates are veiled figures, made of fiberglass, figures that invade the exhibition space in a sort of installation. In 1982, he participated with three large sculptures at the Bari International Fair among the artists invited to the “youth space”. Other sculptural works were exhibited at the International Fair of Bologna and in 1983 at the International Fair of Basel. In the period 1980-1984, the artist is also engaged in theatrical scenography, collaborating with the theater company Cooperativa Alta in the scenographic staging of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”; in “Lazzarina tra i coltelli” by Rosso di San Secondo, “La Moscheta” by Ruzante, with the building in Reggio Calabria in “Socrate alla guerra” by Mario Moretti and with the company of Glauco Mauri, he collaborates in the realization of the scenographies of the ” Don Giovanni ”by Molière 1985, is the return to painting and invited by the Australian artist Nora Heysen, he goes to Sidney and in a year of stay, he performs a series of works on the four seasons: The works, take on a new physiognomy. Perhaps influenced by the fantastic, almost unreal Australian nature, the artist creates twelve paintings on the months of the year and a gigantic 3 by 5 meter work representing the 4 seasons, works that he exhibits at the Maori gallery in Sidney. Back in Italy, he began to paint seven large canvases dedicated to the moon, which he exhibited at the Galleria Fraticelli, in Rome in 1989, thus coming into contact with the artists of hypermanistic painting. Citational painting fascinates him; in a certain sense it is a retrace of his past, when, starting from Vermeer, he conceptualized his works. The theme changes, slowly approaches the Greco-Roman mythology, but not with the desire to perform a sort of illustration of the events of the gods and heroes of the past, but starting from the same, he invents new and fantastic stories, not codified by classical literature . Also in 1989, he took part in the Rome International Fair. His painting becomes clear, clean, maniacal. Italo Mussa writes of him: “Where do the myths that Costantino Di Renzo describes in his paintings come from? It would be very easy to answer: from the ancient, from the primordial recesses of the soul, from history, according to positivist spirits, from dreams, the Freudian psychoanalysts would say; from collective unconscious memory, Jung’s followers would say; from symbols, it might suggest some mystical soul; from the allegorical relations of the forms, the structuralists would say; from the signs, according to the opinion of the followers of Barthes. Of course, his paintings can also be born from a part of all these roots, but this is natural, it is simply the result of the culture, erudition, aesthetic reflection, of which Di Renzo is nourished, but we want to look for something more , to better understand this sudden invasion of myths in the heart of the twentieth century, described by many as an arid, rationalist or at least materialist century.
problem; for us artifice is beauty, it is invention, it is a gesture of courage and triumph, it is the great transfiguration that we also observe in the paintings of Costantino Di Renzo that allow us an extraordinary leap
through time. His works re-propose the rediscovery of legend and fable, of the myth that deceives us, but which at the same time enlightens us, but perhaps we are above all on a safer path if we also talk about the conquest of the imagination. This is a precious indication that we must not neglect. ”
In 1992, following the involvement of the Sakamoto Gallery in Osaka, an important exhibition was inaugurated in Japan, where he exhibited 36 large-format works. In the same year, despite the flattery of the market, he decides to leave the city of Rome, in which he had lived and worked since 1986 and after buying a house in the countryside, near his hometown, he begins, in total isolation, an in-depth study study on Homeric Ulysses, performing a series of works, in a sort of symbiosis between painting and literature. Also in this case his research is not based on a simple illustration of Ulysses’ journey from Troy to Ithaca, but starting from the prophecy of Tiresias, he analyzes a careful analysis of the Homeric hero’s departure from his island, after being sentenced to exile. The artist’s commitment to performing large works and pictorial cycles for public and private collections dates back to this period. The works of this decade were exhibited in 2002, in a solo show in the “Rolnick House” in Miami. In 2003 his painting, although still linked to the theme of the ancient Mediterranean myth, is fragmented into irregular geometries, enriched with plastic elements that continue the story, beyond the surface of the painting itself. In 2005, animated by the spirit of trying his hand at other disciplines, he wrote four short stories: “Io Cromos”, “Abisso”, “Eden” and “Le porte” and in 2008 he developed five videos: “Il canto di Penelope”, “Odisseo, last act “,” Telemachus dreams of his father’s return “,” Inferi (Orpheus and Eurydice) “and” Arianna’s testament “. In 2009 he exhibited forty large-format works in a solo exhibition entitled “Divine metamorphosis”, at the Carlo V castle in Lecce, by invitation and under the patronage of the city. At the end of the same year, in collaboration with the Teatro Stabile D’Abruzzo, he made a video for a theatrical representation on the birth of the city of L’Aquila, taken from the “Cronache” by Buccio di Ranallo, with references, not only to the history of the foundation , but also outlining the painful events of the earthquake, which hit the city in 2009. The Lecce exhibition, however, decrees the end of the mythological period. The artist changes, upsets his theme, entering a new phase. His painting takes on topicality; he digs into the hidden meanders of the mind, dresses up in the clothes of the contemporary world, digs into the human baseness, madness, perversion and weaknesses of today’s society. Small stories in a metaphysical and surreal key, re-proposed with a vein of profound irony. The works of the latter period are exhibited in the Unigallery in Milan in an exhibition entitled Pratica-Mente. Simultaneously performs a video entitled Practice-Mind-None.