I was saddened to hear that visionary artist Robert Venosa died yesterday, August 10, 2011.
Venosa was well known and respected in visionary art circles, and studied with noted figures Mati Klarwein and Ernst Fuchs. He later became friends with Salvador Dalí and was the one who introduced H.R. Giger to Dalí.
Venosa was a teacher as well as an artist. He and his partner, artist Martina Hoffman, travelled extensively conducting workshops in visionary art. Venosa also did images for CD covers and work as a concept artist for the film industry.
His shimmering images of fantastic liquid forms, bathed in otherworldly light, were largely done in an approach inspired by the Renaissance “Misch Technique” of layers of oil glaze over a tempera underpainting, though he substituted casein for tempera. He later utilized digital as well as traditional media.
Unfortunately, the images on his official website are small and don’t do his work justice (thumbnails are not linked in the galleries, click on the buttons). See the detail of the painting above, top, second down. If you search around you can find some of them posted in larger sizes, as here on LSDEX.
For more, see my previous posts on Robert Venosa and Martina Hoffman.
