LEE CORBINO GALLERIES

Inquiries invited and if you own a work by Jon Corbino, N.A. please let me know and I will add it to the catalogue raisonné

Jon Corbino has the virtue of escaping classification. He has flirted with modernism, to be sure, but seems bent on acquiring a personal expression rather than becoming an avowed convert to any of the prevailing cults. Henry McBride, “Jon Corbino exhibits at Contemporary Arts,” New York Sun 1 May 1934

Jon Corbino’s canvases, both monumental and moderate in scale, are charged with heroic movement and colors that are as rich and resonant as the Venetians. Only thirty-three years old, Corbino has already become one of the foremost figures in contemporary American painting… With color or without, he achieves the same great effect of movement, vitality and reality transformed by the artist’s quest for portentous meanings. Martha Davidson, “Jon Corbino: A Baroque modern,” Art News 2 Apr 1938.

Heroic subjects are not fashionable among U.S. artists. But exuberant Jon Corbino, who this week opened an exhibition of turbulent canvases on Manhattan's 57th Street, loves to paint conflicts and catastrophes, swarming canvases in which full-blown nudes and horses writhe and rear in the throes of floods, shipwrecks, stampedes. And gallery-goers like his smoldering color and sweeping draftsmanship, which makes the most innocent New England landscape seethe with dramatic struggle. “Art: Men, Women & Horses: Corbino loves catastrophes.” Time 19 Jan 1942.

It would not be fair to say that if Jon Corbino's bright new canvases could be fed into some fabulous aging machine they would be mistaken, when they came out of it, for old masters. His works sound a contemporary as well as personal note…In other words this Italian-born American artist is of our time and not of our time. Past and present curiously and often furiously merge….”Place” is romantically and exuberantly disguised. Indeed it probably does not exist at all for him while his brushes flay and the rich paint flows. Edward Alden Jewell. “Corbino canvases put on exhibition,” New York Times 25 Mar 1938.

During the middle’30s when Jon Corbino achieved his first success, the trends had jelled into his personal vision of violent, brilliantly colored romanticism; catastrophic things were beginning to happen in the world…. Now that the real thing is upon us he, like so many others, has gone lyrical, though poignantly so, with calmer compositions painted much more skillfully and in a softer, airier palette….full of overtones, leaves a great deal to the interpretative imagination of the spectator. D.B. “Home-grown to maturity.” Art News 15 Jan 1944.

Jon Corbino’s subjects were not rare or exotic people and place. He painted people of the world----People on the beach, in the sun, in the moonlight. But he graced them with spirit, life and movement that transcend the everyday. With figures twisting and turning, he made a beach scene become as immortal as a beautiful ballet. Don Anderson. “A Backward Glance at Jon Corbino,” Chicago American Sun 18 Sep 1966.

Jon Corbino was born in Vittoria, Sicily, in 1905, the son of a writer and the grandson of a well-to-do farmer and wine grower. Jon's father had twelve brothers and sisters and at harvest time the patriarch's children and their children moved out to the farm and helped harvest the crops and tread the grapes. There were pigs and cows, mules, asses and horses, a truck garden for the family's tables and of course much wine and lots of fun for the young ones, who knew, for at least a short time, what it was to live in the lap of an opulent providence. Harry Salpeter. “Corbino: Artist on Horseback,” Esquire Feb. 1939.

Among the younger painters who have come upon the scene in recent years Jon Corbino occupies an auspicious place…He has, to begin with great energy, kept well under control. He has a sense of form which comes out in his drawings and modeling of the human figure and of animals and he has uncommonly good color… It is stimulating to watch his vigorous talent exercising itself with ebullience upon diverse themes, variety being one of his best assets. Royal Cortissoz. “American Art: Jon Corbino,” New York Herald Tribune 18 Jan 1942.

Antonio Amaral, Julio Antonio Perez, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Milton Avery, Louis Bosa, Jon Corbino, Julio de Diego, Dorothy Gillespie, Jack Levine, Leonel Matteu, Miguel Padura, Paul Swan and Jerry Uelsmann