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Angelo's Angels |
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by Bernardo Palombo
"It is painting that is minutely detailed, vital, full
of optimism, luminous, and comforting in its simpleness and
happiness. What more could one ask?" Angelo Romano believes in miracles: His paintings have provoked many of them. Angelo Romano believes in angels: He paints them and puts them up all over the city of New York. This is his way of humanizing the metropolis, of creating positive energy. There is art that decorates and art that protects: Angelo's art transforms. In the "Popular Art" (Mas Actual Ediciones S.A., Madrid 1976), Juan Ramírez Lucas notes that "the naïf painter paints with such love that it is difficult to find the same strength of emotion in other types of art."
Angelo Romano left Spain as a young man. He traveled, was a sailor in the merchant marine and began to paint when he arrived in Brazil. As a sailor, he was asked to decorate several boats of the Brazilian merchant marine. An art collector from the United States who saw this early work bought many of Angelo's paintings and brought the artist to the U.S. in 1968. From that time until today, Angelo has produced a vast body of different works: theater sets in auditoriums and clubs, frescos in cathedrals, designs for totems and cloths, masks, furniture and free standing sculpture. His work ever more emphasizes the importance of recycling and the frugal use of available materials. Angelo paints bottles, old shoes, used frying pans: He rescues from the trash what others throw away and lovingly returns it transformed into art. His largest projects have been accomplished with mostly recycled materials.
For more than ten years he has painted them and helped others to paint them. With his curatorial assistance, the Colombian consulate organized an exhibition of angels, which brought together more than fifty international artists. The success of the exhibit was such that the United Nations exhibited part of it this summer and the exhibition is scheduled to be shown in other galleries in the New York area in the coming year. Having his paintings on exhibit is a constant in Angelo's life. His work about AIDS is exhibited in hospitals, cultural centers and universities. Juan Ramírez de Lucas, the respected Spanish art critic, calls Angelo "the most fecund naïf painter in New York, and to say 'in New York’ is like saying 'in the whole world’!" Angelo has done over 300 exhibitions of his work and is represented in scores of museums and private collections in Europe, Latin and North America. (Among the collections in which Angelo is represented are those of the Prince of Bourbon, the Duchess of Alba, the Rockefeller family, the family of former President Calles of Mexico, and museums and galleries in more than thirty countries around the world.)
In Brazil, there exists the tradition of milagros
(miracles), paintings that are made to avoid a
tragedy, to cure one that already exists or to ask
for a special miracle. Angelo's angels come from
the same source: They are made to protect (Angelo
gives away hundreds of tiny angels to people painted
with the legend "thanks for protecting us"). Angelo's
angels are made to protect, to brighten up that which
is sad.
His angels are an act of magic more than decoration. They are as necessary as light, color and a sense of humor. They are like that guardian angel who, when we were children, we thought would always protect us. The work of Angelo Romano is on permanent exhibition and available for purchase at El Taller Latino Americano. Interested? Write to us: eltaller@earthlink.netSome of the many places to find Angelo's work:
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People feel a personal connection with Angelo's art.
All of them see somethingfamiliar in it: "This
sculpture looks so much like a Russian icon!" Another
person sees Aztec designs, and still another defines
Angelo as an "ultramodernist". Angelo, however, paints
without worrying about which category he belongs to.
Angelo decorated all three floors of the Cabaña
Carioca, a Brazilian restaurant in New York, and his
work there continues to provoke the attention and
admiration of all who visit the popular Times Square
establishment. But a long time ago, Angelo had a
vision that caused him to start painting ANGELS.
Angelo has done a little of everything. He was named
part of the Spanish national handball team, he
worked as an actor in movies with Cary Grant and
Sophia Loren, and he sailed the Amazon River. That is
where he discovered his need for color, to cover
everything with the light. Since he was a child, he
has seen angels and now he promotes them to the world.
He has felt in person the energy of Machu Pichu and
the Egyptian pyramids and his paintings are informed
by their mystic power.
