Comune di Cagliari Assessorato alla Cultura	Centro comunale d'arte e cultura
Antonio Amore "The mourning of Christ"
"Mourning" (2000) sculpted wood

Place of the tragic and of pain, the installation by Antonio Amore proposes a choral vision of the human condition lived as tension with regards to the liberation from whatever type of submission, be this material and mental, physical and spiritual, rooted within reality or else merely imagined.

A chorus of figures surrounds the image of Christ which is detached from the group as a whole, almost stretching out towards a regeneration that passes by way of the sacrifice and suffering, bodily martyrdom and spiritual anguish and, above all, the experience of death.

The group of vertical figures that accompanies this collective rite constitutes an inventory of archaic and primordial signs, emblems of the relationship with nature and the tradition of earth, symbols of work and fatigue which indicate the humiliation of slavery, the mortification of a subjugated life.

It is not fortuitous that Amore has given identity to these wounded characters in the form of the yolk. He has therefore used these old instruments of agricultural work, favouring the diverse consistencies of the wood, the signs of time, the scars of work and the parts worn by the years. With naturalness and without emphasis the artist has appropriated the quality of the materials, subliming their original function to the point of ‘impressing’ a new role in the land of today’s art on these old yolks of the nineteenth century.

In placing these symbols of toil and slavery in a vertical position he has made them living bodies which move and ‘behave’ like icons that grieve the Dead Christ, emblems of a theatre of sentiments and passions which oscillate from the tragic to the lyrical, from the real to the fantastic. In order to carry out his Christ the artist used a panel of chestnut, a wood also bound to the pastoral world that is so dear to him: a linear and almost abstract form on which he has made some cuts on the arms and hands in order to strengthen its figurative character.

As is true of the past, also in this group of figures Amore conceives the work as the research/search for an anthropological truth which places mankind’s solitude at the centre of the representation. This is a solitude capable of transforming the personal drama into universal pain and suffering, capable of passing through the contradictions of the present by way of the retrieval of the archaic purity of the form, not subject to the exaltation of style but to the primacy of interior, spiritual energy.

Moreover, the vision of these anthropomorphic sculptures suggests the desire to imagine the individual forms enveloped by a sole feeling of space, an ideal place in which art is lived as the search for equilibrium, as the overcoming of contradictions.

The invention of these yolks lies in their free way of occupying different positions on the platform on which they are circumscribed, of possessing an autonomous connotation, of articulating movements by playing upon the rhythm of the fulls and the empties, of the distances and suspensions between one form and another. And all of this in a flux of differences that are translated into a search for harmonies and counterpoints.

What Amore intends to retrieve is the research/search for origins, that ethical and aesthetic commitment which in superseding the simple realistic vision places every being in relation to the primordial forces of the earth. By way of a slow assimilation of external phenomena the artist recovers the animal nature of things, the biological potentialities of mankind which projects its action towards the future, in direct contact with the pleasure of exploring the secret aspects of life, transforming it and distancing it from the sense of violence and oppression which menaces it. Mankind, in this sense, is led back towards itself, to within its foundation, as a real presence amidst the ghosts of contemporary civilization, increasingly less capable of paying heed to the interior/spiritual scream, the emotion of an unexpected event and the ardour of a poetic image that imposes itself upon the rest, whatever the spirit might be that animates it.

Antonio Amore

Antonio Amore’s art activity dates to the time of his internment in Kenya where in Nairobi, in 1945, he won a prize at the "Italian Art Exhibition". On returning to Italy he settled in Rome where he held numerous one-man exhibitions. In 1960 he took part in the VIII Quadrennial. In 1964 he dedicated a one-man exhibition to the theme of "Ecce Homo". Following this experience he moved to Sardinia where he taught at the Oristano Art Institute. Sardinia, for Amore, is the Land that allows him to retrieve an ancestral dimension. He paints and writes the strong signs of existence. The "Santulussurgiu Group" founded by him forms part of this course of enquiry. His book entitled "Bustianu" is famous, an hallucinating and perfect autobiography of a man who has slowly run the road of the tragic.

Principal one-man exhibition and installations

1949	"Galleria di Roma", Roma.
1951	"Salone della C.R.I.", Roma.
1955	"Galleria del Vantaggio", Roma.
1960	"Galleria Alibert", Roma.
1964	"Galleria Anthea", Roma.
1969	"Circolo Culturale", Orgosolo (NU).
1971	"Galleria Gruppo R", Iglesias (CA).
1972	"Galleria Il Cenacolo", Oristano.
1974	"Square Gallery", Milano.
1975	"Centro di Cultura Popolare", Santulussurgiu (Or).
1982	"Galleria La Bacheca", Cagliari.
1982	"Galleria Abba", Brescia.
1988	"Galleria Dosso Dossi", Ferrara.
1991	"Galleria Comunale d’Arte", Cagliari.
1994	"Galleria Horus", Oristano.

Principal group exhibition

1945	"Italian Art Exhibition", Nairobi.
1953	"Mostra del Mezzogiorno", Roma.
1954	"Premio Ministero Pubblica Istruzione Accademia dei Lincei", Roma.
1955	"Mostra Arti Plastiche e Figurative", Messina.
1957	"Secondo premio nazionale" Lido di Lavinio.
1959	"Pittori romani d’oggi", Taranto.
1960	"VII Quadriennale d’Arte", Roma.
1961	"III Rassegna Arti Figurative di Roma e del Lazio", Roma.
1963	"I Mostra Nazionale d’Arte Sacra", Celano.
1963	"Selezione opere della Galleria Comunale", Palazzo della Quadriennale, Roma.
1965	"I misteri" (Mostra Internazionale), Roma.
1968	"Mostra d’Arti Figurative", Galleria Comunale, Oristano.
1971	"Rassegna Regionale d’Arti Figurative", Nuoro.
1973	"VIII Mostra Nazionale di Grafica: Italia Bianc e Nero", Arezzo.
1983	"III Annuale di Salsomaggiore", Salsomaggiore.
1983	"Biennale Mediterranea d’Arte Contemporanea", Catanzaro.
1983	"I segnalati Biennale", Palazzo Promotrice, Torino.
1984	"Art Expo Brescia", Brescia.
1989	"Segni d’autore in Sardegna. Grafica contemporanea", Cagliari.