Giovanni Korallo was born in Lecce in 1938, he attended the Institute of Art and the Academy of Fine in the same city and began his activity in 1960. In 1964 he joined a pop-neo-dada trend group and subsequently deals with visual poetry, from the "Gramma" Cultural Center, photography and teaching at the Liceo Artistico of his city.
It was in the Eighties that Korallo devoted himself entirely to painting, making solo exhibitions all over the world: "Italian Renaissence" (Dallas-USA 1987), "Steiemarksches Joanneum Museum" (Graz-Austria 1990), "Interior con señora" (Madrid and Bilbao-Spain 1992), "Cenando en casa del Sevillano" (Italian Cultural Institute - Madrid 1994), "Feira Internacional de Arte" (Nice 1997), "Wilde & amp; Korallo" (with the patronage of the University of Lecce-2000), "RossoKoralloRedKorallo" (Italian Cultural Institute of Nairobi-Kenya 2000), "Tangos" (Italian Cultural Institute of Lisbon-Portugal 2003), without counting the countless personal exhibitions throughout Italy (Rome, Milan, Lecce, Florence, Taranto, Pisa etc.).
Giovanni Korallo wants to express with his paintings his sensitive impressions (sensations) in the most appropriate and effective way possible, as the "sensations" almost always have an event character (dance, metropolitan landscape, music, circus).
His is the painting of movement and action that began with Caravaggio, which describes a fast world which, while still pressing, has already passed. A floating world expression of modern culture.
The artist examines the sensations of everyday life (moments of fun, work, solitude or multitude where dancers, motorcyclists, passers-by, city life, cardinals and beautiful women meet) demonstrating that he has fully assimilated the work by Edward Hopper, to whom he also dedicated one of his paintings (Sognando Hopper).
In Korallo's paintings, the external change of the world is not so much highlighted, but rather his own and others' reaction to these events, as he knows very well that it is impossible to convey sensations without intense participation in the work itself.
The scenic elements of this work are always in motion as in the unfolding of a film and the observer is forced to virtually extend the space of the painting in order to observe the next scene. The observer thus becomes part of the picture and of the scenes it represents.
Both the themes of Korallo's paintings and the way of representing them combine to provide his personal realism. He works with the scenic elements of the world around him, of our daily reality, in fact.
In Korallo's paintings there is neither social criticism nor existential pessimism, there is the life of the movement and joy.
The works of this artist must be read on two levels: the theme and the technique. In a picture like "
"Metropolitan Landscape 1" "the theme is that of a glimpse of the sidewalk, of any American city, where two elegant women cross without seeing each other and each goes its own way with the symbols it represents (Coca Cola, One, NY) . Even the cut and the use of the perspective of the work are personal: we want to focus our attention on the two women and the one closest to us is smaller than the farther one, so that the observer has a clearer vision. of the theme itself. The technique is that of oil on canvas, but the composition of the colors and their combination undergo the unconscious stress of the encounter (the red that peremptorily divides the two women and the writings that seem a bit imprinted on the wall bottom and a little on the body of one of them).
Let's stay in the realism area with a pinch of pop-art.
Korallo's poetic status is also striking. It is sufficient to take a look at the beautiful catalog "Wilde & amp; Korallo", where the poetic passages of Oscar Wilde are coupled to the works of Korallo and which seem to have been made specifically to describe them (as Dario Ersetti points out).
One of the latest exhibitions by Giovanni Korallo, at the Italian Cultural Institute in Lisbon, is entitled "Tangos" and represents a turning point in the painting of the Lecce master, where the theme and color are continually renewed (in the dance youpico, in the streets, in the subway).
Korallo anticipates, as in the film "Shall we dance" (with Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez), a romanticism that seemed outdated by now, but which returns forcefully to the fore, such as the environments, the clothes, the faces, the attitudes and the lights that the artist uses, like a director, to focus attention on essential details.
Korallo's Hopperian matrix is ​​found more in these paintings, although while the American painter was inclined to mythologize static and often "banal" things more, Korallo prefers movement and makes the observer participate in the theme of the work, introducing it in it. Ultimately Hopper is a pessimist, unlike Korallo who makes optimism one of his strengths.
The artist opposes his explicit clarity to the intimacy and mystery of Hopper's works. To the desolate outskirts of Hopper, the abandoned cars and the drizzling fog that leaves behind a deep boredom, Korallo opposes streets full of people joyful to participate in life. However, both artists have a sense of composition which offers, obviously in different ways for different periods, a vision of the situation of life.
If the Impressionists and Hopper himself devoted themselves to scenes of daily life (theater, ballets, cafes, outdoors), the daily life of Korallo's works is represented by the movement and frenzy of modern man; the former paint natural light, Korallo the "artificial" light of modernism; the former use the colors of time and seasons, Korallo uses the brighter and brighter colors of the streets and illuminated dance halls.