Word: uccello
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Most Poetic. The outstanding painting in Afro's current exhibition is his 5-ft.-by-6½-ft. L'Uccello del Tuono (Thunder-bird). The title did not come to Afro until after four months of work on the canvas, when, he says. "I saw something flying, something thundering. I thought of flying, of a witch; then I realized it was a kind of bird." Afro depends on his memory to service him with poetic imagery, finds that not only themes but colors seep in from his surroundings (the grey-green of Serene Stone comes from Florentine tombstone...
...sight was so much more beautiful than all those dry, thin abstractions inside the gallery. It made me want to paint the richness we can see and feel." He went to Italy, where the Renaissance had spread its richness across acres of church and palace walls. Inspired by Giotto, Uccello and Andrea del Castagno, he resolved to paint, as they had, for the millions: "I stick to my idea of a clear, firm, simple and precise art that everyone can understand...
...embellish the city, its churches and palaces he drew on the talents of Brunelleschi, Donatello, Fra Lippo Lippi, Uccello, Luca della Robbia. The great monument to his ideal, a marriage between humanism and religion, was the San Marco convent, which Cosimo prevailed upon Pope Eugenius IV to transfer from the Sylvetrines to the Dominican Observants. Cosimo ordered his favorite architect Michelozzo to repair the building, richly endowed it with 400 rare manuscripts and classic statues of Venus and Apollo. To do the frescoes, Cosimo called on the great Dominican painter Fra Angelico...