Picture a rebellious hiker, calmly walking down the street, kicking pebbles in Long Island. In a corner stands a potato silo. Inside its brightly lit and wide-open space there are dark, immense paintings, streaked with colors. Only a speeding train disrupts the silence.

His Batmobile, parked out front, almost conveyed the image of a man who had dissociated himself from a world full of politics. Wide brushstrokes, colors and straight lines going in several directions supported this resolute iconography.

With literary passion, he brought dignified attention and disdain to a market run by materialistic souls. His exuberant traits and captivating moods liberated his roving knight’s disposition. Irreverently, he cut out, became obsessed, craving to accumulate. He went south to stimulate the bucolic. He reinvents the reluctant brushstrokes, plays, puts everything together, glues and changes. He manages to effervesce, shine and remove blackness; he reduced form, questioning it with layers and leftovers. Abstracts light up, and figuratives become almost invigorated. A conquest of the South. This is a different kind of friend, with vigor in his history, whom the world of art likes and needs.

I miss him.

My American friend.

Ivald Granato

Artist