Gennaro Regina, a painter for the UN. The works of the Neapolitan artist chosen to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Italy's accession to the United Nations
Jul 28, 2015
A Neapolitan in America, in the States, certainly isn't news. A Neapolitan at the United Nations, yes. Especially if he floods the conference room of the New York UN building with sunsets and "Vesuvius", especially if invited for the 60th anniversary of Italy's accession to the United Nations charter.
This is the case of Gennaro Regina, a volcanic interpreter of the stainless Neapolitan archetypes, skilled in transferring to canvas very personal photographic reworkings of the most common metropolitan landscape. Often resorting to the tool of allegory, always sifting through the Neapolitan tradition so that it becomes a symbol of provocation and denunciation. Vesuvius, first of all. With the eruption intended as a propulsor of energy and catharsis, capable of freeing the suffering city from the burden of every deforming negativity. In New York they appreciated the mocking and sentimental charge of Regina, dazzled by the volcano with its fireworks, seduced by the Faraglioni with the red of a pop sunset in the middle. For a Neapolitan like Gennaro, firstborn of an ancient family of art publishers and antiquarian booksellers and patron of «Voyage Pittoresque Factory» the space of thought, production and meeting in Corso Vittorio Emanuele, was child's play. He who has always been «independent and free from everything and everyone», «having fun» with acrylics, oils, tempera and watercolors, amazed that highly select audience with special, lunar, spectral effects. With purple skies, ice rocks, oblique visions and unusual perspectives. Classic elements of a consecrated repertoire and precisely for this reason desecrated and desecrating. Revised and corrected. «We are all Neapolitans» he wrote on the occasion of the Roman exhibition in the Palazzo della Cancelleria di Stato, translating into ten different languages, from French to Chinese, passing through the Neapolitan dialect and German, a strong proposition, in the belief that it could be shared universally. Decreasing that «postcard» Naples in the disconcerting hyperrealism of purples, yellows, blues. It is Regina's "game", escaping any cliché, who loves to mix the cards, subvert alignments, aware of the privilege of his origins, "of being Neapolitan, of being able to live and tell emotions that others are not allowed to", Vittorio Sgarbi writes of him. "So he stands before us in a peremptory way, without shortcuts, with direct images. He does not want to deceive and does not want to be deceived. Gennaro Regina, homo ludens".
