.jpg)
-
"In Del Deo’s works, beauty erodes, but the erosion itself is captivating." (read more)
"Sculptor Romolo Del Deo puts a contemporary spin on classical forms. He mixes up bronze casts with dune sand and driftwood. Many of the works look like the shed skins of ancient Greek statuary, thin, torn, and catching dirt. “Sovra’’ depicts an angel’s face and ragged wings - more like those of a frail bat than an emissary of heaven. Half the face is torn away. The texture is gritty and scumbled with the artist’s marks. In Del Deo’s works, beauty erodes, but the erosion itself is captivating."- Cate McQuaid
Boston Globe
"Sovra" sculpture in bronze by Romolo Del Deo
-
"Fragmented, twisted, broken, yet always heroic and beautiful despite their travail" (read more)
"Grace Notes
Contemporary Artist salvages elegant shards from centuries past.
Fragmented, twisted, broken, yet always heroic and beautiful despite their travail, the figures of Romolo Del Deo are rooted in classical mythology and romantic ideal. But in their compromised poses, they also indicate a contemporary, post-modern vantage point.
'They all start out as whole figures,' Del Deo observes.'You've got to get rid of the extraneous elements, anything that gets in the way of the thing it-self.' Raised in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the playground of the New York Expressionists, Del Deo discovered Italy in his 20s. But while his bronzes clearly employ classical imagery-suggesting angels, saints, and nymphs, as in Colori di Vita(Blu), right-he does not literally quote from art history. His eager evocations of anatomy and beauty are less an homage to tradition than an expression of his own sensibility. Del Deo's new works mix allusions to trees and natural cycles, suggesting both ruins and sprigs of life."
- George Melrod
"Colori di Vita (Blu)" Sculpture in bronze by Romolo Del Deo
-
“
Del Deo’s sculpture explores the idea that the past haunts the present through fragments" (read more)
“Del Deo’s sculpture explores the idea that the past haunts the present through fragments, as Freud claimed. Freud collected ancient figurines and found inspiration in them for his ideas about how the past lives on in us through memory, often in a fractured form. Del Deo is working with a similar notion reinvigorating ancient techniques and using them to produce 'artifacts' of 'instant antiquity.'
- Mignon Nixon (Courtauld Institute of Art in London)
"The Beauty of Time" by Romolo Del Deo (Cox Collection) New Britain Museum of American Art
-
“He transforms perfect form into fragments that express the contrasting forces of perpetual beauty and passing time.." (read more)
"Romolo's artwork exists on two levels: one of pure aesthetic balance and beauty, and another of mysterious and evocative narrative. His bronzes seem to be shards from an ancient culture yet are hauntingly contemporary. They refer to his archeological studies, but none portrays a recognizable figure or myth. Playing with the acculturated baggage of classical icons, Romolo's work mirrors the present art world's fractured individuality and inspiration. When creating these relics, Romolo first makes complete figures, then fragments them to their bare essentials. Considering life as bittersweet, he transforms perfect form into fragments that express the contrasting forces of perpetual beauty and passing time..”
- Alexander J. Noelle (New Britain Museum of American Art)
-
“There is a pervasive, inescapable, poetry in these broken beautiful icons.” (read more)
“Romolo Del Deo’s sculptures reflect the markings of an ancient world, which is our own. His sculptures depend upon what is suggested by absence as well as upon the parts of the image that we can see, and there is a pervasive, inescapable, poetry in these broken beautiful icons.”
- Mark Cohen (Hyperion Art Journal /EGS)
Daedalus - destiny of flight
