"Quite recently I was surrounded and immersed within the numerous modes of thought and creative expression of Johnny Aiello. The immense diversity held within his artistic oeuvre awakens our innate potential to simultaneously appreciate concept, shape, color, image, texture, line position, story, and our own erupting visions and worlds unfolding in a primordial grove down the lane from where we normally live.

We seldom remember the path leading there from our greener years. Aiello brings it around again. So, I became elated, and stilled, very grateful to weave amongst so many of his projections in a universe of Mediterranean light."

Ron Pompei (2005)

Creative "Director, Pompei A.D. - Architecture & Design, Worldwide

"Johnny Aiello has developed a superb drawing ability, as evident in his paintings and prints. His draftsmanship appears spontaneous and one much look further to realize that all is underpinned with a solid tradition of excellence."

Dr. John Cataldo

Former Dean of the Massachusetts College of Art

"Johnny Aiello reveals a rare gift for remarkable pictorial invention. Color and supple line often speak for themselves in Aiello's very vital work.

Victoria Donohue

Art Critic, The Philadelphia Inquirer

"I have known and admired the art of Johnny Aiello since he began his professional career. He is a fine painter, draftsman and printmaker whose work reflects his sensitivity to materials and circumstances."

Ephraim Weinberg

Formerly: Dean of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts;

Director of the National Museum of American Jewish History;

Director of the Grand Rapids Art Museum

"The gift of drawing has been bestowed upon a chosen few over the centuries. This rare talent is immediately apparent in the work of Johnny Aiello."

Socrates Perakis

Perakis Gallery

"Johnny Aiello is among the smartest and most interesting thinkers on the subject of Italian culture."

Bill Tonelli

Author of The Amazing Story of the Tonelli Family in America;

Editor of The Italian American Reader;

Former Editor at Esquire, Rolling Stone and Spin Magazines

A New York City Critic's Review

"The first thing that strikes me about Johnny Aiello's work is its dazzling fecundity: dozens of paintings and drawings in a great variety of shapes and themes run amok. The images bespeak an irrepressible protean energy that is capable of taking any shape with absolute vigor and conviction.

This thoroughly polymorphous approach is genuinely rare.* One can compare such a simultaneous multidirectional production only to the example of Picabia among major artists of this century. Useful parallels can also be drawn, to a lesser extent, with Man Ray and Duchamp as well, of course their immediate multi-faceted predecessors, the Italian Futurists.

The paintings are acrylic; Bright, almost cartoonish, colors predominate. They are about evenly divided between figurative and abstract. Standing out among the figurative paintings is a series comprising a very traditional genre: the reclining nude. Yet this do not have at all the air of tradition. A pure unmixed cartoonish black is used very effectively to underscore and offset portions of anatomy into high good-humored relief. Common to all the work in the room is its mastery rendering in just a few deft strokes.

It's not quite as startling to find such economy being exercised in the drawings. These deal with themes reflected in the figurative paintings: contemporary venus, groups of women bathing in sylvan glades. But these are not studies in any sense. They are highly finished, if quite simplified, pencil renderings. The human figure is glorified here for its formal qualities taken possession of by the uncannily sure hand of Aiello who is yet possessed by its elegant simplicities and mysteries of form.

The abstractions are, if such a thing is possible, contemplative in a way the figurative works are not. It's as if Aiello has invested his figures with such concentrated starkness that he had only ruminative qualities left for his abstractions. Perhaps this is a further application of the controposto which is prominent throughout all his work. The abstractions are color studies compositionally, rectangles of color relating hesitatingly, tenderly with each other, unified by the intricate balancing of baroque-controposto and by an overall veiled, nearly sibylline quality.

It's unusual to see an artist boldly exhibiting so may aspects at once. It's very gratifying to see here. The figures and the abstract shapes complement each other wonderfully. It is a rare example of devil-may-care virtuosity, a stimulating flaunting, on may levels, of convention and, certainly, of caution."

A. diFelice (1988)

Former New York City Gallery Director

(Serra diFelice) & Art Critic

*More lately, Gerhard Richter & brand new "Multiple Personalities" (see April 2006/ARTnews)