cover image Enrico Donati: Surrealism and Beyond

Enrico Donati: Surrealism and Beyond

Theodore F. Wolff. Hudson Hills Press, $50 (168pp) ISBN 978-1-55595-138-2

Throughout his long career, Donati, who was born in Italy in 1909 and now lives in New York City, has changed painting styles many times while always remaining true to his surrealist sensibilities. Art critic Wolff (Morris Graves: Flower Paintings) lucidly analyzes the phrases of Donati's art, from the subjective imagery of the 1940s that led the surrealist poet Andre Breton to laud him as the savior of surrealism to the provocative works of the 1990s that combine surrealist elements with geometric configurations and calligraphic doodles. There is an aura of magic about Donati's paintings, for they are imbued with the artist's mystical relationship to ancient myths and his own intuitions concerning the nature of life. Wolff suggests this quality reached its apogee in the iconic Fossil series of the 1960s, which had its inception in the artist's discovery of a fossil he believed ""had always been my true myth and metaphor, my guide from the very beginning of my career."" He goes on to show that this kind of mysterious personal imagery characterizes all the artist's works. The handsome reproductions glow with the artist's rich colors. (Dec.)