vincenzo balsamo

MAESTRO BALSAMO

ELECTED

MAN OF THE YEAR

International Artist of 2003

PART ONE

Vincenzo Balsamo, The Italian Legend: Between Art Eternity And Human Immortality!!

By Maximillien de La Croix de Lafayette, WACJ Art Historian & Senior Art Critic.

Music and Art Society of America, President Emeritus

Never before and never again, will there be a woman like Marie Curie and Cleopatra, a painter like da Vinci and Raphael, a genius like Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein , a visionary like Picasso, a poet like Victor Hugo, Lamartine, or Dante, a general like Alexander the Great and Hannibal, a composer like Mozart and Chopin, a singer like Caruso, Carlos Gardel and Jacques Brel and an artist like Vincenzo Balsamo!!

Vincenzo Balsamo, the last greatest artist of the 20^th and 21^st centuries!! The Art of Balsamo is immortal!! All the greatest artists are gone; Picasso, Braque, Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, Utrillo, Monet, Pissaro…They’re gone. Only one remains and you are looking at him. BALSAMO!

I admire this man and consider him as the greatest living artist. Am I biased? Absolutely not, even If I do love him like a brother. An Italian living legend, with an unsurpassed creativity and a heart bigger than the world we live in. Maestro Balsamo lives a quiet life in Verona, a beautiful romantic Italian city so dear to the hearts of French poets and singers, lovers and to millions of tourists around the globe.

THE HARD AND PAINFUL YEARS

Vincenzo Balsamo was born on the 27th of June, 1935 in Brindisi, Italy. A great day and a great event for Italia and the world of art. In 1946, Balsamo, the second of seven children, at the age of eleven, loses his father, a sailor who had a great appetite for life. This tragic event plunges the family into economic ruin forcing the young Balsamo to abandon his studies and to take on any job to feed the family. Apparently, he found a pleasant and a challenging artistic job as an assistant to the painter and decorator Pietro Acquaviva. Balsamo began to work all kinds of jobs at Acquaviva’s studio. Through and thanks to his work at the studio, the young apprentice Balsamo met churches rectors and priests who needed a helping hand in restoring and retouching some religious artworks and paintings in their aging centers of worships, cathedrals and churches.

Thus, the maestro and his student had a great entrance to the deteriorated but magnificent religious artwork of the village churches.

Certainly, working on old paintings by Italian masters from past centuries gave the young Balsamo a rare opportunity to come closer and closer to the soul, techniques and mastery of past maestri of the finest Italian art. And this take me personally to what the French Emperor Napoleon once said; During the Egypt campaign, Napoleon Bonaparte stood on his white horse and shouted at his army while he was pointing his finger at the top of the pyramids: “French soldiers, look at the Pyramids, 4000 years of history are looking upon you! Do not disappoint history, Victory!” Balsamo had identical experience. He was working on and retouching the masterpieces of the great era of Italia!! But, certainly no big money was coming. The priests and the half ruined churches were as broke as Balsamo himself!!

pStill life, 1968

No doubt, this new challenging assignment allowed the young Balsamo to gain a deep feeling and gradually a strong understanding of the techniques and styles of the old masters, differentiating between primary and secondary colors, discovering pictorial media, analyzing pigments and measuring time, space and the life of the paintings between…..This self-discovery and perseverance will one day play a major role in the future career of the young Balsamo. This is how, Balsamo came to learn about painting, how to elegantly and romantically flirt with colors, how to sail into the soul and eloquent silence of masterpieces which he unveiled their beauty and converse with. Balsamo thus, became the messenger of the past great Italian masters to the modern world and the go go between the majestic painting era of Italia and our troubled world. Meanwhile, maestro Acquaviva kept on feeding and nourishing the artistic appetite of his ardent student.

Encouraged by his teacher and immediate surroundings, Balsamo began to work on his own composition, to explore the immense world of his genius creativity. First, he began to copy postcards he could find in friends homes, on the shelves and hangers of nearby small shops squeezed between romantic narrow Italian streets…

He tried to reproduce and copy others’ paintings with themes like landscape, countryside panoramas, old houses with nostalgic balconies, floral design, people and other inspirational figures and visions from his imagination, dreams and hope. This young boy worked hard. He worked late and long hours. He had to feed his family, yet, despite all his efforts and sacrifices, the Balsamo’s family financial condition did not improve. We are now in 1949, and Balsamo is only 14 year old. He saw the bright picture of his illustrious career…a distant vision…but, now, Balsamo is worried. A great financial burden was thrown over his fragile shoulders. Balsamo start to look for a second job, a third job, a double shift… Many parts of Italy were in ruin. It is the post war era. Many houses needed to be rebuild, streets to clean up, edifices to restore, buildings to erect or to replace the decimated ones. For a short time, the young boy did what he could, working here, working there, but his heart was into painting. He wished if he could afford to buy a few tubes of colors and brushes, second hand canvases, a piece of linen he can draw on. But this was a harsh wish for the suffering young boy.