Southern Italian comfort: artist Pino layers vision and emotion with experience and memory on romantic, dreamy canvases - Artist profile: Pino - Interview - Biography

After 50 years, Pino can still smell the exciting pungency of paint at the local artist supply store in his hometown of Bari, Italy. Today, when he paints in his Creskill, N.J., studio, that excitement goes into every fluid stroke, every emotive layer of dreamy comfort his paintings exude.

Ninety percent of Pino's paintings are of women who evoke memories of his childhood spent in the kitchen with his large family. His reverence of women comes from growing up in the wake of World War II when the men had gone off to fight leaving him surrounded by mostly women.

Although he is inspired by his memories he says he does not paint from them. Instead, Pino creates scenes using professional models. Using layer upon layer of oil paint, he recreates the scene on canvas. While his paintings may emote the comfort of the hearth, Pino treats his canvas like a gladiator, "It's back and forth like a fight. In the end I want to prevail," he said.

Pino's current style reflects years of study and experimentation with various styles such as abstract, Cubism and Expressionism. He sought not to emulate those styles but to understand them and infuse that understanding insert your design in your own paintings," he said. "I tried to be a contemporary artist, but my background is academic. If you put those together then you get Pino's style."

Pino was born Giuseppe Dangelico in 1939, when television and radio was not readily available. His mother suggested that he draw things around the house such as glasses, bottles and bread to keep him busy. Pino liked drawing so much so that he often offered to do his brothers' drawing homework as well as his own. Foreshadowing an entrepreneurial future, Pino even agreed to do his school soccer teammates drawing homework for money.

In his late teens, Pino's father did not support his son's desire to become an artist and insisted that he attend accounting school. After a year, Pino left to attend the state art school in Bari before deciding to go to Milan in 1960 against his father's wishes. It was there at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts that he experimented with different styles and perfected his skill for painting nudes, which set the stage for another "chapter" in his career.

"In Milan, I started my journey knocking on the doors of the [book] publishers to survive;" said Pino. At first publishers' demand for his work was low so he decided to increase the number of pieces he sold to galleries, and within months he had a continuous demand for his paintings. From 1960 to 1979 his work appeared in several major exhibitions throughout Italy and the rest of Europe. In addition, Italy's two largest publishers commissioned his work for book illustrations.

Even with this success, Pino felt restricted in Milan and dreamed of moving to the United States to find greater artistic freedom. In 1979 he was able to do so with the sponsorship of Borghi Gallery in New York. Married with two children, Pino found that times were tough, but by 1980 Zebra Books Publishers commissioned his work for a book cover. Over the next decade, Pino would illustrate more than 3,000 book covers commissioned by publishing companies including Zebra, Bantam, Simon and Schuster, Harlequin, Penguin USA and Dell. His illustrations graced the covers of best-selling books by authors such as Danielle Steele, Sylvie Summerfield and Amanda Ashley.

By 1993 Pino was exhausted by the process of book cover illustration and decided to stop. "I was determined to work for myself without any art directors, any editors and publishers," he said. Suffering from an initial bout of painter's-block, Pino's return to fine art was eventually received by the May Gallery of Scottsdale, Ariz. This reception touched off relationships with other galleries such as Morris and Whiteside Gallery in Hilton Head Island, S.C., and Stuart Johnson's Settlers West Gallery in Tucson, Ariz.

In 2001 Pino's son Max launched Classic Publications to publish his father's work. Currently the company boasts a clientele of nearly 100 galleries which keep father and son busy. In addition to supplying Max with paintings for publication, Pino continues to sell his originals to several galleries across the country.

Even with his work in high demand, Pino finds time to donate his work to charitable causes. One such donation was prompted when husband-and-wife Stacy and Corinne Turner discovered lost reproductions of Pino's work in rolls of wallpaper they had purchased in a discount store.

Grateful for the returned reproductions and touched by Corinne's fight against multiple sclerosis, Pino and Max decided to donate the proceeds from an entire s/n edition of 495 of the painting "Tenderness" to raise money for MS. In turn, their generosity touched reporters at Fox News and ABC's Good Morning America, which broadcasted the story nationwide this summer. About the generous donation, Pino said simply, "Once in a while you have to give back."

Continuing in his generosity, Pino was named the official artist of the Andre Agassi Foundation. In October, an original painting measuring 50 by 40 feet, with an estimated price of $50,000, will be the largest item put on the block at the foundation's auction in Las Vegas. It is expected to raise more than $100,000 for the charity.

At age 63, Pino shows no signs of slowing down, and he hopes that his children, neither of whom are artists, will supply him with many grandchildren to pass on his artistic legacy. It's a prospect he hopes will leave him no time for retirement. ABN

For more information, call (201) 541 9112 or visit www.classicpublications.com.

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