# Gaspare MANOS (1968 - Bangkok)

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GASPARE AUGUSTO MANOS was born in Bangkok, Thailand on the 6th of July 1968. He is the son of an Italian diplomat father who worked for the United Nations and an Italian mother who inspired and helped her son develop a passion for drawing and sculpture from a very early age. He was taken by both extremely cultured parents to visit most of the existing museums and important collections of art in Europe by the age of 15. He thus developed a strong passion for old masters such as Carpaccio, Bellini, Tintoretto, a strong understanding of 19th and 20th Century art history and thought, a passion for 18th Century furniture, as well as 1920-1940’s works of art, not to mention African tribal art. In synthesis, his ancient family history and the opportunity to live in Asia, Africa and Europe with parents that speak 7 languages fluently and a constant contact with people of exceptional interest ranging from the Pope John Paul II, artists of international repute, diplomats and thinkers of the caliber of Karl Popper gave him the opportunity to question life and the meaning of ‘reality’. His need to find a more satisfying answer to this philosophical issue has been explored through the medium of art since he was the age of 15.

Gaspare’s family took him from Bangkok, Thailand to Nairobi in Kenya in 1973 where he learned Swahili and started to assimilate African culture. He was transferred from a French speaking school to an English speaking school at his request at the age of 8, whilst continuing to speak Italian at home and Swahili with local people. In Kenya where he spent nearly a decade, he traveled widely in close contact with nature, African landscapes and open spaces that have influenced his particular vision of space ever since. A close encounter with a lion whilst on foot outside his tent on a safari has marked him for life and instilled in him an obsession with the passage of time and the fleeting nature of physical life.

The family was then transferred to Switzerland where he spent two years studying in a college in Lausanne, whilst living in a house situated in Geneva at no.12 Avenue Jolie Mont. Gaspare then moved to Athens, Greece for 6 years in the 1980’s whilst living at no.11 Herodou Attikou in Athens overlooking the Royal Gardens and the acropolis in the distance. There he became acquainted with ancient Greek art, mythology and literature, often a source of inspiration in his figurative drawings that often seek to explore the contrasts, ambiguities, in an attempt to define that fine line which separates an action from a ‘non-action’or the moment when something is about to happen. During this time he was introduced to the work of Artists ranging from Julian Schnabel to Jean-Michel Basquiat, who some years earlier in 1982, was the youngest of the artists invited to participate in documenta 7 which he visited. Gaspare wrote to Basquiat via clients of Bruno Bischofberger who was his dealer because he wanted to tell Basquiat that he found his work violently classical in its modernity, comparing it to Picasso one of his great “headeaches, mentor and dead sparing partner” as he calls him.

By now, Gaspare was drawing on a daily basis, something he still does today. His university Batchelor degree as well as PhD studies at the London School of Economics (LSE) take him to London where he remains for over 20 years, whilst also living in Venice, Paris and Brussels. During this time he comes in contact with some of the greatest thinkers, financiers, politicians and artists of the 20Th Century. It was Lucian Freud who famously told him not to be an idiot doing other things and to focus his energy on art and painting in particular.

Gaspare remains reclusive, superbly elegant and refined, he works 15 hour days dedicating all his time to his art in London, Venice and Paris. He is an old fashioned man with a very modern outlook on life. His works are very sought after by the cognoscenti in the art world, appreciated by art historians of international caliber such as Alan Jones who was close to the guru New York dealer Leo Castelli for 20 years. According to Rosa Maria Malet, director of the Joan Miro’ Foundation in Barcelona who wrote the introduction to an important retrospective of his works in 2008 called URBIS in Venice, Gaspare Augusto Manos “dominates colour, and this gives him the great responsibility of being an heir of the great Italian painting tradition”. Gaspare is indeed fascinated by colour and has been know to travel days looking for natural elements he uses to mix and create colour.

Fascinated by the human body and condition, he studied by himself Gray‘s Anatomy at the age of 17, attended dissection classes pretending to be a medical student whilst living in Cambridge at the age of 18 and drew at night from endless nude models he would pay for with his drawing. His natural curiosity has led him to experiment with most media from painting to sculpture and photography.

His interest lies in creating works that make one question what ‘reality’ is. He is interested in the persistence of particular aspects of information over others and how this ‘choice’ be it willing or ‘unwilling’ creates memory, therefore our interpretation of reality. This then determines how we remember facts, often in a fluid, semi distorted way which he has chosen to express in a stile that lies between figuration and abstraction; between fact and fiction, using strong compositions and very refined nuances of colour, tonalities, and hues.

He is fascinated by the loss of memory and the importance of finding key ‘structures and forms, sounds and feelings in the mind’ that simplify and trace a trajectory through the chaos of memory to enable us the represent events, spaces and places that have been ‘digested’ through our experience of the world. There is no question that his research in art and philosophy has been influenced by his personal contact with the great philosopher Karl Popper who once defined him as the ‘Imaginifico of contemporary art” and with whom Gaspare discussed many issues of ontology, epistemology and phenomenology that now inform and underpin his search for a representation of ‘reality’ that is very personal, innovative and classical despite its absolutely contemporary means of expression.

His subject matter range from urban themes, nature and portraits where the element of movement, balance and apparently simple structures are really a result of 25 years spent thinking about what can one ‘remove’ from the canvas to eliminate chaos and represent reality in the most synthetic manner, without loosing the elements of ‘feeling’ that the line, form and colour can and must determine in art. This is a man who will think about a particular work for 2 years and then execute it in one day. He often compares his approach to a professional archer. The act of letting the arrow go and hitting the target takes one second. The rest has taken years to learn.

He was once asked by the painter Howard Hodgkin who had his atelier below his in Bloomsbury near the British Museum in London what mix of artists could create a ‘gaspare’. He replied : “ take a large mixer. Inside put Tintoretto, Fujita, Picasso, Bonard, Carpaccio, a few 12th Century miniaturists, a few Flemish painters, some African sculptors, Apollinaire, Ronsard, Rimbaud, Chateaubriand, d’Annunzio and Rilke, a PhD at the London School of Economics, 5 languages, visiting 100 countries, close encounters with people who created history and a lot of work, introspection, tenacity and vision” Then you will have a pencil line that is mine. Add the hand of God, who created my soul, and you will have my colour. Add modesty, and the belief that we are just passing dust, and you will have my vision of art. His moto is “Salvation lies in art”. He believes that art should be a universal language capable of eliminating all existing hierarchies, language and cultural barriers and ultimately also act as a means to help people, especially children.