About

BIO

My name is Giulio Napoletano, I was born in Napoli (Italy). I’m a painter and illustrator based in Antwerp. I studied geophysics at Università degli Studi Navale in Naples and painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp where I graduated in 2018.
Since always I am passionate about comics, horror movies and literature.
During my academic period I studied with dedication the works of Hieronymus Bosh and Pieter Bruegel. During the last years at the academy I developed a passion for the Art Brut and the outsider artists such as Antonio Ligabue and Henry Darger.
In 2020 I founded, with five ex colleagues of the Academy, the Blackbirds’ Project art collective.
Since 2011, I participated to several collective expo organized by the Royal Academy of Antwerp, Fameus, ‘T Werkhuis in Borgerhout, KOP Gallery, Archipel.
During Summer 2022 i had my first personal expo in the prestigious location of the Aragonese Castle in Agropoli supported by the local administration and cultural organization and Master Painter and Art History Professor Antonio Morgese.

Main expos:

  • August 2022 – Aragonese Castle of Agropoli- “Impossible battles and other stories”, personal Expo organized by the administration of Agropoli (SA), Pro-Loco, in collaboration with Master and Prof. Antonio Morgese.
  • November 2020 –”RAAK!”, group expo organized by Fameus and coSTA cultural associations in collaboration with Stadmagazijn and the city of Antwerp.
  • September 2020 –“A conversation about life and death”, group expo organized by Loods Des Doods collective in collaboration with Pleaseaddcolours collective at Archipel art center, Antwerp.
  • August 2020 –“GAST 2020”, group expo organized by Fameus cultural association at RAAT art center, Oudaan, Antwerp.
  • July 2020 –“Exit Strategy”, group expo organized by Pleaseaddcolours collective at KOP gallery, Antwerp.
  • August 2019 –“GAST 2019”, Tique Gallery, Antwerp.
  • May 2019 –“Depression unveiled”, group expo organized by Fameus cultural association in Kasteel Sterckshof, Deurne, Antwerp.
  • September 2018 –“In between”, two-persons expo at MAF gallery, Antwerp.
  • July 2018 –“Pillar 12”, street art group event, Wilrijk, Antwerp.
  • August 2017 –“Beyond the light”, two-persons expo at MAF gallery Antwerp.
  • May 2016 –“Catch 22”, Antwerpen Tower, organized bythe Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp.
  • June 2013 –“Best of 350”, group expo dedicated to the best works presented at the expo “350” organized by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp.
  • May 2013 –“350”, celebrative group expo at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp.
  • April 2013 –“Mail Art Expo”,Strasbourg Central Station (FR).
  • July 2012 –“Art DNA”, Castello Aragonese di Agropoli.
  • June 2011 –“Biennale del Libro d’ Artista”,Biblioteca Sperelliana di Gubbio.
  • April 2011 –“Mail Art Gubbio”, Biblioteca Sperelliana di Gubbio (ITA)

SHORT STATEMENT

My work is intended to be a meditation about the mysteries hidden in dreams, in nature, in memories and how they can be represented in their evolution and mutation, becoming another seed of a story to deliver to the beholders. I found my inspiration and reason to build my figurative narrative language from the love for the work of those who walked the insidious path of magic and fantastic realism, beyond the anthropocentric conception of art. Not only painters but writers, film-makers, authors of comics or illustrated books such as Lovecraft, Gaiman, Giger, Henry Darger, Antonio Ligabue, Joe Coleman, Katsuhiro Otomo, Junji Ito, Mario Bava, Guillermo Del Toro. I feel, similarly to these artist, the necessity to deal with reality through a codified language of allegorical images. Through the unreal I want to uncover an hidden side of the materiality and set a scenario for an updated relationship between the human dimension and the dimension of the surrounding multiverse.
My technique involves the use of acrylic, oil, inks, hand print, on paper and canvas. The crafting of my works also includes pieces of canvas glued to the main piece or pieces of paper glued together in a sort of randomic, amateurish fashion.

CRITICAL REVIEW by Master and Professor Antonio Morgese

Presenting an artist like Giulio Napoletano is not simple. We are dealing with a rather versatile artist. He is marked by the influence of the Naïfs and Antonio Ligabue, with his beloved animals. But Giulio does not stop here; he goes beyond this naive artistic current to immerse himself in the Max Ernst’s Surrealism with his dreams and his imagination, but, looking at his latest works, I can only say that he found his true artistic identity in the Expressionism, one on model of the German artist Otto Dix with a rather rigorous condition of creativity and offering a deep introspective language.
By creating his own pictorial universe and by making the psychological analysis of his artistic feelings, the result is his complex works expressed in symbols. These works are composed in a synthesis of volumes and space of balanced physical entities and dimensions, very articulated in the space fabric and even in the most subtle and lively texture of a plastic expressiveness that, in some case, can also become dramatic. The function of the symbols represents very pure notes. Intense colors capable of transmitting to the viewer the pictorial message of his subtle search for communicability. The pictorial universe of Napoletano also represents a chimerical space, where dream and reality merge, creating a corner in a dimension of pure beauty, with a painting approach that expresses the soul of things, an approach, perhaps exuberant, which however comes from its spirit with his own feelings and I would also say an art that comes from his spiritual examination. The psychic baggage that Napoletano has confiscated from the reality he lived and lives day after day, his function as an artist and his maturation will play a primary role in tracing his world more and more deeply as a painter.

Antonio Morgese