Paolo Colombo

Opening reception: Saturday, April 6, 6-8pm

1923 S Santa Fe Av Los Angeles

Baert Gallery is pleased to announce Paolo Colombo's third exhibition with the gallery on view from April 6 to May 11, 2024.

Paolo Colombo fosters a sense of gestalt intelligence, collapsing the boundaries between the ancient past and present. Working exclusively with watercolour and pencil, Colombo balances his simple language with a meticulous visual method, building a tableau of dots and lines that mimic mosaic tesserae. Mythological figurations, decorative designs and pastoral vignettes emerge as fragments of history, part-excavated, inviting the viewer to journey through the veil of time.

As an Italian who has spent the vast majority of his life in Athens, the artist’s attachment to the motifs of ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine culture is hardly surprising. After a twenty-one-year hiatus, in which he pursued a career in curation, Colombo returned to a painting he had left unfinished in 1979 as if not a day had passed, implicating himself in the same quiescent stream of artistic exchange his paintings evince.

Foremost in his practice is the embodiment of an economy of means; he works solitarily, mostly from memory, and with minimal materials, respecting the lineage of ‘humble’ art forms –­ such as embroidery­ ­­­– which he so admires. For the textile piece ‘Untitled, After Gold’, Colombo collaborated with ITERARTE – an itinerant gallery connecting contemporary artists and artisans across the globe – to design an embroidered hessian canvas in keeping with his signature style, the facial contours of a Venus stitched in a glorious gallimaufry. 

His intimate and lyrical execution demands proximity, to be paid the same attention one would give when reading a book. Colombo aligns himself with poet Giorgos Seferis' yearnings for chasteness, as articulated in his poem 'An Old Man on the River Bank' (1942):

Such sentiments even extend to the titles of his works; ‘Wisteria’, ‘Antwerp Blue’, ‘Pyrrol Orange’ and ‘Quinacridone Gold’ no more than a simple indication to the primary colour used for the canvas. Like Gabbiani, Colombo’s use of paper, often seamed together and stitched in these soft blues, blushing pinks and creamy whites evokes an essential humility, a historical resonance that will continue to bear the weight of expression across cultures and epochs.

Paolo Colombo (b. 1949, Torino, Italy) lives and works in Athens, Greece. He received a degree in languages and literature from the University of Rome in 1975 but the formative years of his painting and drawing practice were self-taught. In 1977, Colombo was the first European artist to exhibit at PS1, New York. From 1986, he worked as a curator in museums across the United States, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and Turkey. After a 21-year hiatus, Colombo took up his personal work as an artist again, coinciding with a move to Athens, Greece. His work has since been exhibited at Tristan Hoare, London and Baert Gallery, Los Angeles among others.