Alejandro Pasquale

The Artwork of Alejandro Pasquale

Born in Buenos Aires in 1984, Alejandro Pasquale is an Argentine painter. In 2002, he entered the Universidad Nacional de les Artes in Buenos Aires to pursue an arts education. Two years later, Pasquale left the university and continued his education under the tutelage of local artists. Among those artists active at this time in Buenos Aires was painter Eduardo Stupia who works almost extensively in black and white with occasional use of color. In both 2013 and 2014, Pasquale participated in Stupia’s workshops at the highly regarded Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires.

Alejandro Pasquale’s work resides in the art category of magic realism, a realistic portrayal of the world with additional mystical or cryptic elements. His intriguing drawings and paintings, predominately figurative, abound in highly detailed elements. With a background in art based on his love of nature, Pasquale places his figures in lush, natural surroundings; however, he obscures their faces and emotions through masks composed of foliage and flowers. With their sense of sight covered, the figures are removed from the external world and absorbed into a state of internal contemplation.

In 2011, Pasquale was recognized for his drawings in the Salon de Mayo held at the Provincial Museum of Fine Arts “Rosa Galisteo de Rodriguez” in Santa Fe, Argentina. In 2015, he was a finalist at the National Painting Biennial in the city of Rafaela. In the same year, Pasquale won the first award at the National Exhibition of Contemporary Art held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Junin, a provincial city of Buenos Aires. In 2017, he was awarded a scholarship to participate in the Encontro de Artistas Novos exhibition held at the Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Pasquale also participated in the Salón Nacional de Arts Visuales held in 2021 at Buenos Aires’s Palais de Glace.

Alejandro Pasquale is a regularly appearing artist with the Beinart Gallery in Melbourn, Australia; the Victor Lope Gallery in Barcelona, Spain; the Quimera Gallery in Buenos Aires, Argentina; the Stone Sparrow Gallery in New York City; and the Daniel Raphael Gallery in London. In addition to his many solo and group exhibitions, he continues to exhibit in many international art fairs. Alejandro Pasquale’s work is included in many private collections around the world.

“The intention of my work is to be a necessary reminder that, even though we often overlook it, we are a horizontal part of the great network of living beings that co-inhabit this earth. We belong, on the day we allow ourselves to recognize this, to this immense and magical nature. We are nature.” —Alejandro Pasquale

Notes: Images of Alejandro Pasquale’s work and contact information can be found at the artist’s website located at: https://alejandropasquale.com

Alejandro Pasquale’s work can also be seen at Saisho, an online art market site, and at the avante-garde Beinart Gallery where Pasquela has had several solo exhibitions.

Saisho is located at: https://www.saishoart.com/alejandro-pasquale

Beinart Gallery is located at: https://beinart.org/collections/alejandro-pasquale

Karl Bertil Gadö

The Artwork of Karl Bertil Gadö

Born in Malmö in July of 1916 to railway official Karl Emil Gadö and Hedvig Maria Persson, Karl Bertil Gadö was a Swedish painter and graphic artist. In addition to his self-study, he received formal training between 1933 and 1935 at the Skåne Painting School (Skånska Målarskolan) in Malmö. Gadö’s work and that of his contemporaries was inspired by political ideologies of the 1930s and ideas posed by the prominent Surrealist movement; the combination of these two forces created a new form of art, magic realism.

Gadö first exhibited his work in 1939 at a collective exhibition in Malmö. In 1943, he had his first solo exhibition in Malmö and later exhibited in 1947 at a group exhibition in Malmö’s City Hall. Works by Gadö were included in the 1948 “God Konst i Alla Hem (Good Art in the Home)” exhibition held at the HSB-Huset in Fleminggatan, Stockholm. Along with landscape painter Lars Engström, he regularly participated in Skåne’s art exhibitions.

From 1948 to 1952, Karl Bertil Gadö was a member of the Imaginisterna, an avant-garde surrealist artist group founded in 1948 by painter and designer Max Walter Svanberg. This group of artists, who were looking for an alternative approach to surrealism, left the detailed style of Salvador Dali in favor of the artistic works of artists like Max Ernst and Paul Klee. Members of the Imaginisterna included such Swedish artists as painter Max Walter Svanberg, painter and lithographer Carl-Otto Hultén, painter Anders Österlin, and book illustrator and cartoonist Gösta Kriland.

Gadö was also a member of the Skånsk Avantgardekonst, or the Skånes Avant-Garde Art: he participated in their 1949 exhibition at the Malmö Museum and the 1951 exhibitions held in Hälsingborg and Stockholm. Gadö presented his work in the 1951 Biennial held at the Museum of Modern Art in San Paulo, Brazil. He was also represented in the same year at an exhibition of Skåne artists held in the Liljevalch Art Hall in Stockholm.

In the 1960s, Karl Bertil Gadö presented intense experiences of nature in his work. Various animal species were presented as symbols of life’s struggle in scenes foreboding disasters and devastation; he also emphasized in his work the ideals of independence and man’s willingness to find his own way in life. Around 1980, a culmination of Gadö’s work was a series of images whose content revolved around cosmic motifs. Most of these paintings were executed with clear contour lines; between these lines, the spaces were covered in a limited scale of brown and gray tones.

Gadö worked for decades with public works in relief, free sculpture, mosaics and stained glass. These works contained content similar to his paintings with the earlier ones containing strong abstract compositions. Karl Bertil Gadö died in 2014, at the age of eighty-eight. His work is held in both private and public collections. Major collections include the Malmö Museum and the Moderna Museet of the National Museum in Stockholm.

Note: An extensive study entitled “Surrealism, Occultism and Politics: In Search of the Marvelous”, which dwells on the motifs, thoughts and techniques of Surrealism’s various artists and writers, is a well researched article that explores the relationship between Occultism and Surrealism. The article can be found at: http://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/1418044/4266cce09074ad02812bbef9fd73cc1b.pdf?1510498215

Second Insert Image: Karl Bertil Gadö, “Uppe i Projektet”, 1990, Oil on Canvas, 130 x 100 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Karl Bertil Gadö, “The Miracle”, Date Unknown, Colored Woodcut, Edition of 25, 36 x 35 cm, Private Collection

Carlos Cancio

The Paintings of Carlos Cancio

Born in 1961 in the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Carlos Cancio graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Boston. He moved to Strait of Gibraltar on the coast of Spain, setting up his first studio and began to show his work professionally beginning in 1981. Cancio lived in San Francisco from 1991 until 2003, at which time he returned to Puerto Rico where he currently resides and paints.

The Ponce Art Museum in Puerto Rico acquired Carlos Cancio’s first large scale work in 1986- a nine-foot square painting entitled “Ballets Comteporains”. He had his first one-man show at the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture in 1987 and, in the following year, had a solo exhibition at the San Juan Museum of Art and History. Cancio also has shown at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in 2001, the 2005 Art International Congesshaus in Zurich, Switzerland, Art Shanghai in China, and the 2012 “Afrolatinos Exhibition” at the Museo de Arte de Caguas in Puerto Rico.

Carlos Cancio’s art is in the painting genre of Magical Realism, where magical elements are a natural part of an otherwise mundane, realistic environment. His oil and acrylic media paintings contain figures, elements of dream sequences, and visual narratives which break the rules of our perceptions.

Bernard Gilardi

Paintings by Bernard Gilardi, Self-Taught Magical Realist Artist

When Bernard Gilardi died in 2008 at the age of 88 he had made nearly four hundred oil paintings. The fruits of a more than forty-year effort, these works were tucked away in the basement studio of his Milwaukee home, neatly stacked amongst files of preliminary sketches and the magazine and newspaper cuttings from which he drew inspiration.

During his lifetime Gilardi hadn’t publicly exhibited any of his work. Ironically, it was Gilardi’s funeral that eventually brought his paintings out of the basement. A family friend attending the funeral at the Gilardi home saw his studio and told daughters Dee and Mary they should show their father’s work. This suggestion prompted the sisters to take photographs of a few paintings and send them to various galleries in the Milwaukee area.

Debra Brehmer, director of Milwaukee’s Portrait Society, was one of those who received the photographs. A contemporary art gallery, Portrait Society showcases both current and historic artists who work in portraiture. Brehmer called to inquire about the paintings immediately after looking at them. Soon she and artist Richard Knight, her assistant for the excursion, were descending into Gilardi’s basement studio and excitedly uncovering painting after painting. “We were down there with our mouths open,” says Brehmer. The two spent months in Gilardi’s basement studio, cataloging and photographing his paintings.

According to Brehmer, Gilardi is a rare example of a self-taught artist who, painting in his spare time, crafted not only a prolific amount of work—more than some professional artists—but work whose style and subject matter evolved over time. It’s even more incredible when one considers that he had no support group or critical audience from which he received feedback. His devout Catholic family mostly ignored his painting—to them it was simply “Bernard’s pastime”—or found the figures and faces he painted a bit too strange for contemplation.