Victoria Donohoe
The modern upsurge of interest in drawings and prints in America is reflected in the "Regional Exhibition of Prints and Drawings" at the Art Alliance, 251 S. 18th St., featuring 95 works selected from over 600 entries.
Competing for six prizes were artists from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware living within 50-mile radius of Philadelphia and artists connected with this city in a working capacity; judges were Edmund Casarella, Fritz Eichenberg and Jacob Landau, with Mrs. Philip Klein as ex-officio juror.
Predominately a show of small, moody and expressive works usually involving the human figure, the exhibit is a pleasantly varied, stimulating selection representing all the contemporary graphic mediums.
A minority viewpoint is presented by formalists Savelli, Coiner and Eichenberg, while artists who strike a lyrical note include Aiello, DeVivi, Drabkin, Kaplan, Kohn, Maxwell, Osborne and Petlock.
Amont the prize-winners, Johnny Aiello gives a good account of himself in a lilting "Blue Interior" lithograph.
Labels: JOHNNY AIELLO EXHIBITS
Philadelphia Inquirer - 1966
Victoria Donohoe
Johnny Aiello, who also accepts the importance of everyday and the ordinary, reveals a rare gift for remarkable pictorial invention and an obvious flair for color in both the soft and the bright range, in his oils and in the myriad small prints, gouaches and drawings displayed at the Towne Gallery, 2116 Locust St. Color and supple line often speak for themselves in Aiello's very vital work which tends to be diagrammatic and telegraphic of reality rather than possessing the trivia of realism.
Labels: JOHNNY AIELLO EXHIBITS
ART NEWS
Victoria Donohoe
Aiello's Aiellos: Johnny Aiello, after a considerable hiatus as an artist, is producing again. Some two decades ago he operated a modest local (Gallery Pane Vino), so it's not surprising now to find him opening a gallery of his own (Aiello's Aiellos) as a convenient showcase for his new work.
Johnny Aiello always had an exceptional drawing facility. That his ability in this medium has not slackened is attested to by a full inventory of drawings. The wall exhibits include paintings in a couple of styles with the human figure receiving prominent attention.
It might be easy to lump Johnny Aiello's work with Pop Art because of its use of common objects and - in some instances - its cartoon style. It is clear, however that his work comes out of a different tradition.
The objects he includes in his room interiors and landscapes are charged with metaphysicial implications and in this regard, are strongly reminiscent of the work of Giorgio de Chirico. Other influences are felt as well, but there is general atmosphere of the surreal. In a typical painting, a vase of flowers, a glass of wine, a wooden table and a headless, sculptured torso bob up and down weightlessly in an artist's studio partly submerged in floodwaters.
What separates Johnny Aiello from run-of-the-mill late surrealism is a loose, cartoonlike control of the ingredients of these pictures. Emphatic color never quite implies atmospheric depth because it is combined with outlined and schematic shapes. The tension between the format of these pictures and the fantasy in them is resolved in favor of cartoon-like informality.
Labels: JOHNNY AIELLO EXHIBITS
Victoria Donohoe
Most "annual membership" exhibits, at their loftiest, conjure up the notion of provincial respectability. However, there is one handsome new exhibition filling the first and second floor galleries at The Print Club, 1614 Latimer St., that lives up to its long-standing reputation as the area's most vital annual membership show, bar none. Persons who insist they do not care for original prints might change their minds if they saw the latest edition of this Philadelphia classic, on view to Dec. 27.
One of the unmistakable signs the long-established event still commands respect throughout the printmaking world is the fact that these 68 exhibitors from three European nations and 16 states showing 71 prints include at least a dozen artists of international reputation who consistently send to this juried event.
Labels: JOHNNY AIELLO EXHIBITS
Victoria Donohoe
Theme song of Johnny Aiello's one-man show at Socrates Perakis Gallery, 2116 Locust ST., is "Bathers."
In many media (oil, acrylic, pencil, gouache, pastel, linoleum) his impressions range from simple statements in line to intricately decorative compositions with Matisse or Leger in the background. There are hints also of Cezanne and Braque.
Labels: JOHNNY AIELLO EXHIBITS
Victoria Donohoe
One of Philadelphia's most promising young artists, Philadelphia College of Art-trained Johnny Aiello is soloing in prints at The Towne Gallery, 2116 Locust St.
Including etchings, lithographs, wood and linoleum cuts, the show stresses versatility in the handling of print media, and in adaptation of line to emotional reaction---fine and sensitive when the subject matter is old masterish; black, white and bold when it is surrealistic.
Aiello's thinking is figurative, whether he deals with human or fantastic creatures. Flitting, perching, pouncing or darting through many of his compositions are bird shapes.
A series of nudes in interiors is matched by weirdly dismembered human limbs with or without bird accompaniment.
Aiello's message often is cryptic. Recurring is a Picassoish donkey-headed creature that smacks of surrealistic satire. In "The Rescue" such a figure, holding a bird form, wades through black water; while in "Before and After" it is shown with an all-human nude.
Dismembered body parts and predatory birds shape the design of "The Attack."
For such a study as "Dedee," however (girl leaning head on arms), Aiello follows in the footsteps of the Impressionists.
Labels: JOHNNY AIELLO EXHIBITS
Dorothy Grafley
The Print Club, 1614 Latimer St., which has been in the throes of physical reconstruction since last June, has reopened with prints by five Philadelphia artists: Russell T. Gordon, John Silk Deckard, Johnny Aiello, Christine McGinnis and Stuart Egnal (To September 30).
Johnny Aiello, whose work is on view simultaneously at the Socrates Perakis Gallery, offers linoleum cuts and etchings (in color and black and white) with stress on the human figure as such.
Labels: JOHNNY AIELLO EXHIBITS
Dorothy Grafly
Johnny Aiello, a regular at Perakis Gallery, 2116 Locust St., looked profitably and selectively at Picasso's "Bathers" themes before coming up with an especially lively series of acrylic paintings and linoleum cuts on that subject done during the past year.
Labels: JOHNNY AIELLO EXHIBITS
Dorothy Grafly
A homecoming exhibition by Johnny Aiello, who spent the last eight months in Rome, is on view to April 13 at the Towne Gallery, 2116 Locust St.
Technically versatile, the young artist offers oil paintings, gouaches, linoleum cuts, etchings, lithographs and drawings.
With a deep bow to Matisse, his interiors are gay with busy detail.
Attracted primarily to humans, he paints broadly (many nudes and semi-nudes); while a number of sketches have a self-portrait base.
Although the vigorous impression is dominant (especially in black and white linoleum cuts), delicacy also touches a young girl with flowers.
Labels: JOHNNY AIELLO EXHIBITS
Dorothy Grafly
Johnny Aiello has a show of figurative paintings and prints at Socrates Perakis Gallery, 2116 Locust St. that denotes personal growth. His pictures had a complex formal existence and strongly assorted colors that now are sometimes exchanged for a deepening palette and an evocative atmosphere less insulated from feeling and not so hedonistic. Although the old sensibility, freshness and robust character remain intact, his forms mostly sink into deep shadow now without coming into sharp focus.
Labels: JOHNNY AIELLO EXHIBITS