Zofrea s Odyssey. Zofrea s Odyssey

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1 Salvatore Zofrea was born in Borgia, Italy in He migrated to Australia in He studied at the Julian Ashton School in Sydney and with Henry Justelius. In 1981 he received the Power Bequest Grant to study in Paris for six months. In 1985 he received the Churchill Scholarship to study fresco painting in Italy. Today he is a celebrated artist, having won numerous prizes, awards and wide gallery representation for his richly coloured paintings and powerfully themed woodcuts. His work features sensuous, expressionistic colour and a richness of input from his imagination and experience. Self Portrait at Manly Beach. Salvatore Zofrea s series of forty woodblock prints, Appassionata, is a meditation upon his family history and personal memories. The works are rendered in black and white from roughly and expressively carved compositions that include his extended family and friends as subjects. These works explore the artist s development and influences as a young boy in Borgia, Italy, representing the simplicity of children s games to complex religious festivals and hard peasant work. His migration to Australia and emotional journey to manhood are realised in dramatic detail through his use of the woodcut. What it means, this leaving the place where your ancestors bones lie in the local churchyard, the streets where you first played games, or the field you first ploughed, the food that seemed, once, to be the only food a man might eat, since it was what the land produced and your mother knew how to cook most of all, language, the words through which the whole world of the senses, all you saw and heard and touched, was alive on your tongue. To leave that for a place where all that is most immediate to your nature must be forever not just different but second-hand and questionable, where the life you live, however real and hard the conditions of it, and whatever success you may have there, will always, to a degree, be ghostly, since it is a second life... DAVID MALOUF C. L. B H I E C Zofrea Work Sheet No. 1

2 THE BOY FRIGHTENED BY THE SEA kauri pine woodblock 40 x 60; Zofrea remembers being taken to the nearby seaside town of Catanzaro Marina by his brother-in-law, Peter Muriniti. It was night time, and the first time he had seen the sea. A frightening experience for him, he imagined the rolling waves as wild animals. His great-nephew Adam Calabria was the model for Zofrea as a boy. The woodcut is also reminiscent of a number of Edvard Munch s woodcuts of lone figures by the sea at night. This woodcut was a very challenging one for me - to try to capture the sense of fear for a child. I ve depicted myself as a little boy, when I was taken to see the ocean for the first time. It was night time and l was petrified. This happened because when we were getting ready to come to Australia it was the law that all intending migrants had to go and have a medical test in one of the large towns. In our case, our brother-in- law took my mother and my two sisters and (me) to a town called Catanzaro Marina and from here we took an overnight train to Rome. While we were waiting for the train to leave someone from the family took me by the hand to go and see and hear the sea for the very first time. I had never heard this horrific roaring sound before and in the pitch dark I was terrified. I thought I might be sucked up or engulfed by the sea. Here, then, is the little boy with his back to this monstrous sound, and I ve tried to draw the waves as though they are about to grab me and suck me in. It was like a strange animal, and that s what I ve tried to make it look like. Study for The boy frightened by the sea pencil, pen and black ink, wash 48 x 63cm C. L. B H I E C Zofrea Work Sheet No. 2

3 SELLING VEGETABLES DOOR TO DOOR woodblock 45 x 59.5 Zofrea s father grew all manner of vegetables on his Seaforth property, bags ofwhich Salvatore would sell from his home-made cart around the neigbourhood every Sunday morning. From part of these sales he purchased art materials. My mother and my sisters Lucy (Lucia) and Connie (Concetta) and I came to Australia in 1956 when I was nine years old. My father had migrated here six years earlier and was joined by my brothers Leo (Leonardo) and Guy (Gaetano). When we arrived in Sydney we went to live with them at Seaforth where my father had bought a house. He d also bought the block of land next door and planted out every square inch of it with vegetables for the family. When I was about eleven, as a way to get some pocket money and to buy poster paints, I began selling vegetables door to door 1 made a wheel- barrow out of an old wooden pineapple box and a couple of pram wheels and my mother prepared the vegetables and put them in brown paper bags. Every Sunday morning at about 7.30 am I d set off with one of my local mates and my dog, Bobbie, and we d go all round the streets of Balgowlah and Seaforth. The people used to be quite keen to buy from me - they would wait at the gate and pay two shillings a bag for broccoli, cabbages, tomatoes, potatoes and beans. By lunch time I d be finished andlalways came home with an empty barrow I d give half the money to my Mum ands ome to my friend to buy an ice-cream and maybe a bottle of soft drink and I d keep the rest to spend on poster paints and sweets. Looking back, these years were the golden years of my innocence. The world was very uncomplicated then and safe too. C. L. B H I E C Zofrea Work Sheet No. 3

4 SELF PORTRAIT WITH CIGARETTE catalogue number 57 jelutong woodblock 40 x 60; studies are in Drawing book no. 4, p. 40 and back fly leaf, recto This self portrait goes back to when I was 17 or 18 when I was terribly uncertain - looking out towards a world of the unknown. This is a very nervous portrayal of myself - I m tense and the cigarette indicates that - before a canvas that l am about to paint. I m not nervous about the actual painting but more about the career I was entering into and my convictions about being a painter. What made me nervous and apprehensive and tense was this uncertainty - that I didn t have the security of my familiar old world around me. I felt terribly alone in my thoughts and imagery. I have used the lamp as a symbol of light giving me courage. Another reason why I used the lamp was that it goes right back to my life as a child when I remember my mother in Borgia had one of those lamps by the bed before we had the power put on in the house. As a child I was always fascinated to see her lift up the flue and light the lamp. The portrait shows a rather thin, chisel-faced young man, for l was very thin in those days - thin in need of nourishment from the art world around me. In depicting myself this way l have dramatized the unknown, what is about to happen, or could happen. My friend in that room is my pet bird, a budgerigar in a cage. The room was my first decent little studio, about 10 by 8 feet, off the kitchen. That was my own little world - it was very simple but I loved it. Study for Self-Portrait with cigarette pencil, pen and brown ink 48 x 63cm C. L. B H I E C Zofrea Work Sheet No. 4

5 CATCHING FIRE-FLIES IN SUMMER jelutong woodblock 40 x 60 Children caught fire-flies around an old fig tree outside the town walls of Borgia. The model for both boys in the foreground was Zofrea s great-nephew, Adam Calabria. This image is one of my strongest memories. Behind our street, Via La Vina, was the wall that encircled the town. The wall had crumbled in many places, but where we were it was quite high. When we climbed over the wall we would find ourselves in the fields, because Borgia had no suburbs - there was the town, where people lived close together and then the fields and open land. Just beyond the wall was a small fig tree and at dusk in the hottest part of the summer my mates and I used to see the fire-flies around the fig tree and we would try to catch them. It was a magical moment, a time of innocence and it has remained in my memory as magical and romantic. Study for Catching fire-flies in Summer pencil, pen and black ink, coloured pencil 48 x 63.5 cm C. L. B H I E C Zofrea Work Sheet No. 5

6 THE ARGUMENT magnolia woodblock 45 x 59.5cm This woodcut is really dealing on the universal level with the impact of emotions on people who are closely involved together. The image is about the human condition - about jealousy and possessiveness. Ihave personalized it to depict myself and Stephanie. We are just about to go to bed and we ve had an argument. Behind the two people sitting on the edge of the bed is a picture of a couple who ve just made love and its really just reflecting what goes on and why these arguments arise. Outside, you can see the trees, and the moon coming up. The moon is a wonderful romantic image that has been used down history to symbolise the night. The image of the moon recurs a lot in my work and you will often see it rising or dying. The moon influences human andanimal behaviour so I think it is very apt for portraying images like this one - with two individuals having an argument. The moon gives an extra tension to the scene. Study for The Arguement pencil, pen and black ink, 47.5 x 57 cm C. L. B H I E C Zofrea Work Sheet No. 6