Gaetano D' Aquino (1969) - SENZA TITOLO

Oil on canvas 40x50 by Gaetano D' Aquino with authenticated photo

Gaetano D`Aquino was born in Catania on August 30, 1969, where he currently resides and works. After earning his artistic diploma from high school, he joined several contemporary artistic movements.


D'Aquino has embarked on his personal journey in the field of painting, bringing his creative visions to life through a variety of themes and techniques. This path has made him a distinguished representative of contemporary art.


D'Aquino's works have been acquired by numerous important collections, both public and private, and have been featured in many specialized magazines and art catalogs.



Personal and Collective Exhibitions

1998 Catanese Artistic May, Catania (collective)


2000 Galleria, Il Massimo, Catania (personal exhibition)


2000 Meeting with Painting, Mascalucia (collective)


2001 Galleria, Giotto, Catania (personal)


2004 First Contemporary Art Exhibition, BOHEMIEN, Palazzo Comunale, Acireale


2004 KATACLOÒ Art Event, Teatro Metropolitan, Catania (Group Exhibition)


2004 Galleria, Il Massimo, Catania (solo exhibition)


2005 Second Painting En plein air curated by Vittorio Sgarbi, Nineo


2005 ARETUSA Third Millennium Literary and Artistic Award, painting section, first place, Siculo Center for the Promotion of Culture, Regional Office Siracusa


2006 Colors Inside and Outside the Green Rectangle, Contemporary Visual Arts Review, Hotel Luna, (Oleggio Castello, Milan) curated by Donat Conenna


2007 Arte Fiera, Le Ciminiere, Catania


2007 Galleria, Arte Nuvò, Catania (solo)


2007 Galleria, Art Gallery Ortigia, Syracuse (solo exhibition)


2008 Tremestieri, Art 14th edition, Tremestieri Etneo


2009 Galleria, Il Massimo, Catania (solo exhibition)


2012 Galleria, Civico 69, Florence (staff)


2015 Day of Art and Creativity EMPIRE, Catania (group exhibition)


2015 Europa Eventi Arte, Porte di Catania Shopping Center (Group Exhibition)


2016 Galleria, Contemporary Collections, Enna Bassa (collective)




Gaetano D'Aquino and the Truth of Being by Donat Conenna

To reach the truth of being (in the character, in the object, and in every other visual concept), there must be suffering in the cognitive process. In simple words: you need to know how to paint.


At a later stage, we can consider all the motions of the 'es' (expressing, externalizing, listening, exposing) that lead man to become an expressor of realities, both external and internal to him.


To frame the D'Aquino case in the right light, Gaetano D'Aquino from Catania, one must paraphrase Descartes. I paint, therefore I am. An axiom that leads the myth of the image, of which we are all unknowingly carriers by cultural inheritance, to indicate the possibility of thought reaching being. For artists, this kind of 'Buonarroti syndrome' ('Why don't you speak?') is felt—naturally more or less—in relation to their own narrative possibilities.


The reasons why Gaetano D'Aquino approaches the blank canvas and 'sketches' it, beginning to mark the graphic hatch, which then illuminates with colors, thus granting the image the grace of truth, lie precisely in that act of mimesis, which we poor ordinary mortals do not know how to do: that is, to bring to the surface—on the canvas, albeit limited and limiting—the external and internal horizons of the landscape, object, character, or concept.


An operation that, in various styles, has traversed the centuries and the history of art but which is now calling (from vocare, vocation) artists of 'total' reality less and less frequently, like D'Aquino.


Image operator, especially anatomical, who can well be defined as hyper-realistic, when in his 'civil,' secular, profane 'icons,' saves the subject depicted in the foreground on the canvas from the pitfalls of impression—that is, the temptation to summarize, to essentialize. The velvety 'Body of a woman' is the narration of a woman's body: no one would think of seeing the other.


D'Aquino works with infinite finesse, playing with a capillary marking of the epidermal details of the work, which he then envelops in a sequence of chromatic glazes, until achieving the uniqueness of the subject, precisely—'as if'—the Catanese painter wanted to capture from the world those (now rare) fragments of plastic integrity and make them live again forever on his canvases. But of course, it's not as simple as saying that.


And here is his slow, meditative orientation towards reality: even in the stillness of a single frame, the being, the 'living' of a landscape, an object, a character, or a concept, is traversed by a light that we by definition call 'photographic,' but which in Gaetano D'Aquino is nothing more than the voluptuous desire to achieve the mimesis of the natural absolute, to rigorously mark the surroundings, to faithfully reproduce the somatic accuracy of anatomies.


It would be easy, as is always the case with verist, realist, hyperrealist painters, to invoke the now outdated rights to interpretation that man, undoubtedly, must claim, and which — as is historically established — has instead led the concept of art towards the indistinction between meaning and signifier of abstractionism, towards the conceptual randomness of performances, towards the gestural populism of formless art, sorry, informal art, towards the automatic actions of photographic clicks, towards the non-mirror truth, or rather virtual, of digital art, towards the illusions of kinetic art. In a word, towards the chaos of definitions.


Ten thousand years from Altamira, we still cannot say what art is. Exactly the opposite of the direction taken by this Sicilian operator, with his reaffirmed, calm, palpable, tactile, human narrative completeness.


Donat Conenna


Brief description of my artistic vision

Since my childhood, I have had the privilege of immersing myself in art by admiring the wonderful portraits of Emanuele Di Giovanni, the renowned painter from Catania. This was the initial enchantment that sparked my fascinating journey into the world of painting; a journey marked by various artistic successes, solo exhibitions, and my works displayed around the world. I started with portraiture and then explored different themes such as landscapes, still life, and the nude.


I personally try to express and highlight what others do not see, and to make it visible through my own eyes. I define painting as a mute poetry, as Leonardo Da Vinci said.


Today, after a long painting experience and after exploring various subjects, I focused on the intense study of Sicily, my homeland. Specifically, on water, in all its shades, reflections, colors, brightness, transparency, and as a life element, characteristic of my island; as well as Mount Etna, which is also part of my studies, with its lava flows.


I have realized to date that the study of water is among the most difficult things to depict, and observing Turner's paintings, I understood that water and light are almost impossible to essentialize.


Gaetano D`Aquino