Armando De Stefano ^©  

(1926 - 2021)

Edition n.53 of 199 copies

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Armando De Stefano began his artistic career during the Second World War, when in Naples he drew famous characters of American colonels and soldiers. At the age of 15 he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, having among his most illustrious masters also Emilio Notte. In 1947 he created with six other Neapolitan painters, including Franco Palumbo, Mario Colucci, Renato Barisani, the "Gruppo Sud", an expression of adherence to a realistic-social painting, and then joined the Italian realist movement together with Guttuso, Zigaina, Vespignani, French and Attardi.

"At the Academy I had the wonderful meeting with Emilio Notte: great painter, great teacher. He said: "Remember that lions walk alone", this phrase has accompanied me throughout my life, the moral lesson of Night guided me through 42 years of teaching. In the third year of the Academy I won the De Gasperi Prize in Rome and exhibited at the Venice Biennale, paintings of elongated figures. Thanks to an exhibition at the Grenoble I met Picasso, Braque, Matisse. It was a shock. Taken to do discontinuous things, to look for my way (...) It is not enough to bring the world to Naples, we must bring Naples all over the world. (...) I had the '600, Cammarano, Gemito, my old people. I chose this craft because I loved brushes, colors, canvas, the smell of white water, the human body. But ancient passions, the eternal instruments of art, must always serve modernity".

(From Interview with Armando De Stefano by Pietro Gargano, Il mattino, 6 novembre 2005)