In his youth, before his
ascension to the cinematic Mount Olympus, Sylvester Stallone had intended to
become an artist. After taking a course in Switzerland, over the course of
nearly fifty years, he has seriously worked at his art, in parallel with his
work in film.
The thing one most needs in
order to interpret Stallone's work is to understand that they arise out of an
inner necessity that stems from when the amount of accumulated knowledge,
sensations and feelings demand to be materialized and transitioned to a new
reality. Painting, according to Stallone, is the fastest and most exact way to
process and translate your subconscious.
The images and characters
found in Stallone's paintings, in a way, replicate events in his creative and
personal biography. But they are not portraits in the traditional understanding
of the word. Frantic form and color are
used in the large-scale transfigurations that breathe new life and energy into
the people who surround the artist, or the celebrated actor who is the idol of
millions. In his works, the subject matter reveals itself through, among other
things, the title, words, letters and symbols painted directly on the surface
of the canvas. The constructive subordination of separate elements to the whole
is often determined by a preference given to one color or another: white, red,
black. Stallone's paintings can seem beautiful or savage, skillfully done or
not, but they do not leave viewers indifferent, as within them lives the
mystery of experience. They express the power of human despair, suffering and
hope, which is given a "voice" in painted form and comprises the positive side
of the work of Stallone as an artist.
It is no accident that several of Stallone's works
have been placed in the Ludwig Museum in the Russian Museum. Sylvester Stallone
is an artist who both knows and highly regards the artistic output of his
contemporaries, especially Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. Works
by both of these artists, among others, were donated to the Russian Museum by
Peter Ludwig.
