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The Blackfriars Gallery Presents
Solo exhibition

Reimagining: Faith, Hope and Love

25 recent paintings

by Deborah Joan Lanino

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Opening Reception:

Sunday September 22, 2 - 4 PM 

On view through December 12, 2024

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​The Blackfriars Gallery

2301 Vine Street Berkeley, CA 94708

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Gallery Website: dspt.edu/reimagining-faith-hope-love

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Review of the exhibit:

catholicherald.co.uk/art-for-the-autumnal-equinox-deborah-laninos-reimagining-faith-hope-and-love/

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Ancestral Connections &

Renaissance Resonances 

"This is a project that I have wanted to do since graduating from Pratt Institute in 1986, when I studied a semester abroad at SACI (1985), in Florence, Italy and saw the exhibition of Bernardino Lanino in Vercelli, where I learned about the prolific Lanino Workshop near Milan and of my ancestral connections to this great artist. I received an old handwritten family tree from Turin as well as books and commemorations, which included several generations of architects and engineers.

 

I used the occasion of my 2024 solo exhibition at the Blackfriars gallery in Berkeley, to commission genealogists in Piedmont to verify that lineage from centuries-old documents. These works have emerged in abstract and impressionistic paintings inspired by themes such as Faith, Hope and Love that reflect a contemporary view of traditional subject matter seen in Renaissance art. I use techniques such as chiaroscuro (lights and darks) and sfumato (blurring the edges) with a soft misty style, much like the workshop of my ancestor, Bernardino Lanino (1512-1582) Vercelli, Italy."

-Deborah Lanino

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Bernardino Lanino - 1512- 1583

"After training locally with a little-known artist, Bernardino Lanino was associated with Vercelli's most important painter from 1530. Three years later he had already reached the rank of master painter. His early work displays his teacher's gentle figure style and delicate effects, but Lanino added his own soft, misty brushstrokes. After his teacher left to establish himself in Milan, Lanino became the region's leading painter. Between 1540 and 1560, Lanino made several visits to Milan, creating altarpieces and frescoes. There he absorbed the strong influence of Leonardo da Vinci's chiaroscuro. During this period Lanino made many of his finest drawings, creating startling chiaroscuro effects using black chalk and white bodycolor heightening on brown prepared paper. He often used pen and wash with white highlights in his accomplished compositional studies. Throughout the 1560s and 1570s, patrons eagerly sought Lanino's paintings, and his workshop was amazingly prolific. Examples of his soft style spread throughout the eastern Piedmont and Milan, and his sons also became painters in Vercelli." (The Getty Center)

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