Garibaldi

Giuseppe - Acrylic on canvas 70x100cm

Last week I handed in a painting of Giuseppe Garibaldi for a competition organised by the Italian Cultural Institute in Malta. The Exhibition will open on the 4th of July 2007, which happens to be the bicentenary of the birth of Garibaldi.

Usually I stay away from these competitions, for two main reasons, firstly I find it very hard to bring together the concept of art with competitions and secondly because I find it difficult to get into the right frame of mind to tackle the subject. Garibaldi! What would you choose for a subject that relates to Garibaldi? It is easy to start thinking of grand battle scenes and heroic images of the Italian leader, but that is not me.

So I decided to go for something simple, a portrait. Luckily images and photos of Garibaldi are in ample supply on the internet. What I tried to do is take 2D images of 20th century revolutionaries and translate them into a portrait of Garibaldi. Don’t know if I managed but quite a few people at first thought it was a painting of Che Guevara.

Interesting is the evolution of the painting. Very different from my landscapes is the fact that usually the end result has nothing to do from where I started, but in this painting I knew where I wanted to arrive.