Antonio Tamburro is born in 1948 in Isernia. After attending
art school, he enrols at the Accademy of Fine Arts of Naples
in 1966 where he has Professor Giovanni Brancaccio as a lecturer.
In 1968, after his studies in Naples, he attends a paintings
course at the Accademy of Fine Arts in Rome, under the direction
of Professor Franco Gentilini.
In Rome Tamburro begins to exhibit works in some of Rome's
prestigious galleries, drawing praise from both critics and
the public. In the same year he creates the scenery for several
operas that are held at the Flavio Vespasiano Teatre of Rieti.
In 1969 Tamburro returns to Isernia for awhile, where he paints
a fresco cycle for the Church of San Felice.
Between 1970 and 1973 the painter frequents Italian cultural
spheres, in particular Naples, Rome (where he meets Orfeo
Tamburi, Domenico Purificato, Giorgio De Chirico, and Fausto
Pirandello) and Perugia, where he establishes himself by tightening
his friendships with the art representatives of Umbria city.
In 1978 he is asked to teach at the Academy of Fine Arts of
Spoleto.
In 1981 he leaves teaching permanently to dedicate himself
exclusively to painting. Numerous art reviews begin to take
an interest in him and many editorials are dedicated to his
works.
In 1983 one of his important one-man shows is displayed in
the prestigious Palazzo Comunale di Perugia.
In 1984 he is the protagonist of a monumental work of art
in the "Salone dell'Armatura" of the 3F Italian
school. At the same time he is putting together a collective
show with Burri, De Gregorio and Rambaldi.
In 1985 he is commissioned to do a large fresco in the Church
of Santa Maria Assunta in Perugia and a mural in the city
of Dozza, a small town in the province of Bologna in which
the facades of the houses have been frescoed by all the major
contemporary artists. In the same year he meets the painter
Remo Brindisi and Gastone Breddo with whom he will maintain
lasting friendships. He also begins his collaboration with
the Ghelfi Gallery of Verona and Montecatini Terme with two
large exhibitions. The first is held in the Terme Torretta
of Montecatini Terme and the second in the "Palazzo della
Gran Guardia" of Verona.
In 1986 a one-man show is exhibited in the hall of the Municipal
Casino of Sanremo.
In 1987 an exhibition of his works is held at the Margherita
Gallery, with the patronage of the Comune of Taranto and the
Provincial Administration.
In 1988, by invitation of the Committee Organizer, he attends
the Tour of Italy to produce a cycle of paintings of the theme
of bicycle racing, which is then displayed in the various
Italian cities along the route. At the end of the tour Ghelfi
Publisher-Verona publishes a catalogue entitled "The
Bycicles of A. Tamburro" with an introduction by the
famous sports columnist Adriano De Zan and text by Jean Pierre
Jouvet.
In 1989 he completes a large mural in the city of Como. The
following year, the editor Giorgio Mondadori publishes a catalogue
in the collection "Presenze", with an in-depth essay
written by Dario Micacchi.
Two years later a one-man show entitled "The Juliet’s
of Tamburro", consisting of thirty-seven paintings, is
exhibited in the evocative setting of Juliet's house in Verona.
The same year Tamburro exhibits a series of paintings on beaches
in the Rodel Gallery of Darmstadt. In Hamburg The Hallbach
Gallery displays a collection of twenty Parisian landscapes,
the fruit of his trip several months prior. This exhibition
is discussed in an important essay edited by Hoffman Verlag
Editions-Frankfurt.
A wide number of exhibitions in prestigious Italian art galleries
follow one after the other in the years between 1990 and 1996,
the year in which a survey of his paintings is held in the
Teodora Art Gallery of Toronto, Canada.
In 1997 and in 1998 the painter goes to Paris for several
months where he spends his time in an artistic circle and
has the opportunity to throughly study the European art Collections
of the important museums. In the same year, together with
Ennio Calabria, Concetto Pozzati, Mimmo Rotella, Ugo Nespolo
and Sandro Ghia, he participates in the selection committee
of a competition entitled "The model in art".
In January 2000 a series of his works are exhibited at the
exhibition "Art Miami 2000", winning noteworthy
praise from the public and from critics.
From 2001 up to the present Tamburro exhibited in numerous
italian and international galleries wich include individual
shows in “Padua Art Gallery”, Padova 2003 –
Gallery “Michelangelo” – Roma 2004, –
Personale “Galleria Ruez”, Monaco, 2004 –,
“Sala Segantini” – Savognin,Switzerland
2005 – “Galleria Ruez” – Asburgo,
Germany 2006.
He permanently exhibits his work in Galeria Villa Del Arte
Barcelona Spain.
A colourful glimpse of the suburbs, an old-fashioned motorbike,
a lonely and silent coffee bar, or even an attractive nude
woman: sooner or later in the paintings of Antonio Tamburro,
everything plunges into the depths of memory and then rises
again to the surface, transfigured.
From the beginning to present, his artistic development has
taken the form of a style of painting that is seemingly figurative
and which also conveys strong emotions; it is a strict as
well as meticulous search, disciplined in its rigorous execution
and in the slow materialisation of the image into the canvas.
At times, though elsewhere almost on the verge of a hyper-realistic
expression, some of his works seem to eagerly deny a merely
imitative practice of art and the viewer is faced with a subtle
game of existential allusions.
This is indeed an integral part of the artist's desire to
slightly blur the edges of reality and submerge its meanings,
to seduce and, at the same time, disorientate the viewer.
Antonio Tamburro is a painter who is concerned with both the
fascination of daily episodes and the abstraction of the moment.
He exposes himself to visual inspiration, followed by a lengthy
process of tackling the theme in search of the most intense
and the most distinctive presentational form, never losing
sight of life's essential values.
Tamburro's works also demonstrate the artist's preoccupation
with the manipulation of time, obtained through a splintered
dialogue represented by a passing state of mind.
It is indeed according to a variety of moods that Antonio
Tamburro subjects have been selected: a handful of essential,
everyday motifs, large related to the city and the environment,
portraying the visual significance incidental choreographs,
which remind one of Mario Mafai or Pasolini's "borgate"
in Rome.
An essential role is played by light; vibrating and dazzling,
it provides opportunities for unexpected chromatic visions
which eventually reveal the spell of familiar outlines.
This light causes entire blocks of flats, possibly the view
from his studio window in the city, to take on a transparent,
almost dematerialised quality. Here, once again, Tamburro
makes use of pictorial means to reflect and comment upon the
world surrounding us, upon the passing of things and of time.
The features that distinguish the artist's urban compositions
are Constant: continual reflections of lights and colour emerging
from a monochrome background, absolute fragmentation of surfaces
and, above all, an intensity of vision combined with an accuracy
of style.
On the other hand, when he confronts three human figure, it
is the spontaneous pose, the unexpected composition of form
and existential arguments of the common man, which constantly
permeate the painter's artistic endeavours.
Both in the case of sensuous nude females and of his working
class vacationers moving about under a desolate sun, human
surfaces are not treated as anatomically naturalistic reproductions
but rather as vulnerable membranes separating the figure's
inner life from the daily realities of its surroundings. It
is as if these works represent a place in our memory, lodged
in the back of our minds, strongly subjective as well as inherent
to each individual and the imagination of the artist, but
nonetheless a collective experience.
Tamburro's pictorial vivacity and compelling power are adapted
better to fairly large formats. He feels at case dominating
the canvas with bold gestures, confidently approaching and
exploiting the canvas with a highly pictorial and lyrical
chromatic structure. Colour, along with light, becomes the
principle operating force that continually "excite"
Tamburro’s pictorial vision while investing his art
with an eruptive quality that is derived from an acute awareness
of life and things.
A certain minimalism undoubtedly hangs over some of Antonio
Tamburro's works and here is where their undeniable artistic
quality probably lies. But these paintings are comprehensible
at first glance without being banal, paintings which always
tell a story without relinquishing it, paintings in which
the observer in the end finds reflections of his own experiences
and quiet ills which will surely follow him into the future.
