Paolo Colombo

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):

I want nothing more than to speak simply, to be granted that grace.

Because we’ve loaded even our song with so much music that it’s slowly sinking and we’ve decorated our art so much that its features have been eaten away by gold and it’s time to say our few words because tomorrow our soul sets sail.

Such sentiments even extend to the titles of his works; ‘Wisteria’, ‘Antwerp Blue’, ‘Pyrrole 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.