Berta Walker Gallery
208 Bradford Street • Provincetown • MA 02657
p 508-487-6411 • f 508-487-8794 • info@bertawalkergallery.com
www.bertawalkergallery.com
FOR RELEASE: UPON RECEIPT, 5/12/07
Two Exhibitions Open The Berta Walker Gallery’s 18th Season
May 25 - June 24 - Reception Friday, May 25, 7 – 9 PM
SALVATORE DEL DEO
“PROVINCETOWN FISHERMEN”
“HORIZON REVELATIONS”
mixed media group show of gallery artists
SALVATORE DEL DEO
“Provincetown Fishermen”
Including the “Homage to the Patricia Marie” Memorial series with introductory comments by Sebastian Junger
Salvatore Del Deo’s paintings are always a mix of deep feeling and painterly technique, and the current exhibition distills that mix to a rich concentration. This season, we are treated to new paintings revealing the intimacy, quiet, calm, and serenity of fishermen returning at dawn with their catch; the excitement of the fishermen climbing all the over vessels, cleaning and repairing for the next departure; and the animated conversation of the fishermen at day’s end. This exhibition also premieres the three murals Del Deo completed in 2001, memorializing the “Patricia Marie” lost at sea in 1976. Prior to this exhibition, only one of these amazing and emotional paintings have been exhibited.
On October 24, 1976, the Provincetown scalloper, the “Patricia Marie," with her entire crew was tragically lost at sea while struggling to get home from the Grand Banks fishing grounds. The next day, with heavy heart, Salvatore Del Deo embarked upon his "Homage to the Patricia Marie" series that was to take 25 years to complete. In this exhibition, we are offered the unique experience of seeing all three of these heroic and compassionate murals together for the first time.
These exceptional paintings are part of a proud and prestigious tradition of the tribute artists and writers, including Charles Hawthorne, Ross Moffett, Nancy Whorf, Sebastian Junger and Marsden Hartley, have paid to Northeast Coast fishermen. Like Hartley's famous paintings which focused on the loss of two fisherman brothers off the Coast of Maine, Del Deo's "Patricia Marie" trio employs an allegorical style, both brilliantly painted and emotionally charged, to evoke the heart wrenching loss the families and the Provincetown community endured. “I tried to get as close to the source of the tragedy as I could, Del Deo said. While the mystique of fishing is pictorially exciting, the task is to always grasp something that is moving, timeless … as timeless as a Greek tragedy. It stimulates a whole vocabulary of images that, as an artist, I find intriguing.”
The men in Del Deo's tough and tender ensemble portraits are real personalities in a real community, not generalized illustrations of an American "type". All of the models for these large-scale paintings are local fishermen, including the son and grandson of Billy King, who was the Captain of the “Patricia Marie”. The other models include Billy Fields, Chris King (and his son Jared), Tim Everett, Tom De Carlo, Lawrence Schuster, John Brown, and the artist himself. The fishermen link with hands on shoulders, to their brother fishermen and the young son whose grandfather perished, while one holds the front-page news open in his lap. Their grief is heavy, palpable, drawing us into these portraits of the human spirit.
Del Deo believes that, as Marsden Hartley stated:“art is entirely a local affair dependent on an artist's personal sensitivity to place.”This exhibition confirms that Del Deo’s great sensitivity to place also makes for great art.
The “Patricia Marie series, in particular, reveals the strong influence of Del Deo’s early exposure to the work of the great Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who urged him to continue his work in fresco mural painting. Del Deo’s Memorial paintings are a mix of painterly technique and an especially deep feeling for the Provincetown fishing industry with whom he fished for a few years in his youth. One identifies with the painter’s compassionate gaze through his rich palette and soulful perspective.
The Portuguese Festival opening night event will exhibit one or two of the murals, introduced by comments by Del Deo and his friend Sebastian Junger.
Salvatore Del Deo came to Provincetown in 1946 to study with Henry Hensche. As a young artist in Town, he was also mentored by his great friends Karl Knaths and Ross Moffett, and studied at the Art Student’s League in New York with Edwin Dickinson. He met his wife, the writer and art historian Josephine Del Deo, in 1953, and they have lived and worked in Provincetown ever since. Over sixty years after his arrival in Provincetown, Del Deo still paints in his studio daily, tends to his chickens and vegetables, and, in the true tradition of his Italian homeland, stomps grapes for wine in the fall.
For further information please contact the Berta Walker Gallery at
508-487-6411.