William Congdon's Pastels

AN EXHIBIT BY AN ARTIST WHO HAS ALWAYS BEEN FAITHFUL TO OIL PAINTING, PALETTES, FLAT BRUSHES AND MORE WILL BE INAUGURATED ON MONDAY 12 MARCH AT 6PM IN THE BOCCONI SALA RISTORANTE AT VIA SARFATTI 25

An artist famous for working with oil painting throughout his long career, William Congdon’s works on paper are rare, with the exception of his first tries at painting between 1947 and 1949. He started “drawing with paint” – i.e. he turned to pastels – in 1982, when, at the age of 70, he had already entered the last season of his life as a painter. From that year onwards, he developed a very rich production of works on paper, in parallel with the oil paintings he made until the very end of his life. 

Feeling the rigidity of the color stick, Congdon shelved the filling function of color and reduced it to a mere sign, graphic trait, without demeaning its chromatic value.

“These pastel works, unlike oil paintings,” says art critic Rodolfo Balzarotti, “were all produced while gazing out the window at the earth, the fields and the sky beyond. They are, if anything, the result of attention to and focus on the instant, the present moment, from which the power of sign shoots like an arrow across the page, by conveying the tensions, the spatio-temporal directions and the voices which describe the drama of creation, in the eternal yet ever-changing dialogue between Heaven and Earth.”

The exhibition will be open Mondays through Saturdays from 9am to 12pm, until 4 May 2018.
 

by Susanna Della Vedova
Translated by Jenna Walker