A Retrospective Of Artwork By Sylvester Stallone In Galerie Gmurzynska, St. Moritz

Written by Arnold Rickenbacker Friday, 20 April 2012 20:40

ST. MORITZ, SWITZERLAND .- From February19th until March 15th 2011, artworks by Sylvester Stallone will be exhibited at Galerie Gmurzynska, St. Moritz. Stallone’s exhibition at Galerie Gmurzynska is a retrospective of his work. The pictures will document different periods of the creative work. About 30 pictures of the action star will be presented, including various self-portraits. Stallone’s pictures are as action-packed as his movies: colorful, expressive and abstract. Referring to Automatism and abstract Expressionism, his paintings merge to a new, very personal expressive style. Thereby the Hollywood star uses the Expressionism concept of presenting art in a spontaneous manner without caring about conventional shapes. On exhibition Until 15 March, 2011.

The exhibition at Galerie Gmurzynska will be accompanied by a catalogue written by art critics Anthony Haden-Guest and Donald Kuspit. Subsequent to the show at Galerie Gmurzynska, Stallone’s art will be exhibited at the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. Sylvester Stallone managed to conceal his talent for a long time. When he visited Galerie Gmurzynska in Zurich in September 2008, the gallery’s co-owner Mathias Rastorfer was not really surprised: Zurich Film Festival took place at this time and the movie star is well known as an art collector. “You could see he knew how art should be looked at. That he had an eye for it“, remembers Rastorfer. What did surprise him was the actor’s confession, that he had actually been a painter himself for many years.

After Rastorfer had seen some of Stallone’s artwork, the idea of a Stallone exhibition was quickly born. After visiting him in LA, Galerie Gmurzynska showed eight Stallone pictures as a sneak preview at Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2009, which is one of the four biggest art fairs in the world. The exhibition in St. Moritz now is the outcome of the positive feedback at this fair. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue, in which texts of the renowned art historian Donald Kuspit and Anthony Haden-Guest, art critic (i.e. for New York Times and the London Times) are included.

Sylvester Stallone has started painting in his teens. His early pieces, which he signed “Mike Stallone”, were experimental. Due to financial reasons he then worked as an author until he started a career as an actor. In 1976 he made his breakthrough as “Rocky“, started painting again and continued to do so until today. During the seventies and eighties, Stallone’s art was very expressive and sometimes morbid, but he did enjoy painting with watercolors, and gained a liking for painting flowers.

Describing his painting, Stallone has said: "Movies are a vision dependent upon three or four hundred people to accomplish it. So there's great compromising. And so much is lost in the translation. So when you get up there, it's maybe 40 per cent of the way you envisaged it. Because of the finance thing, and the actor doesn't interpret it properly. Or the director isn't on form that day and he missed the whole point. Whereas painting is all you do. It either soars or it crashes. There's no one to blame but one person." He also suggested many of his art pieces come out being in a bad mood. Stallone told The Sunday Times: "I find that the more unhappy you are, the more confused you are, the better your art is. Happy art, it just doesn't seem to work for me"

A change in his style began 1989/1990. He got deeper into art, studied closely contemporary art and painters like Picasso, Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer. He looked into the abstract work of Mark Rotho and developed a unique style for himself: He produced expressive, profound and expressionistic works, sometimes modified self portraits, sometimes pictures playing with words.

Visit the Galerie Gmurzynska at : http://www.gmurzynska.com/