Italian sculptor Jo Endoro arrives in the USA: “He is Canova’s heir”

It is perhaps a geographic, orographic matter of millenary culture and civilization. Italy is the place of pleasantness, proportion, social life that rejects extremes and disproportions. The place that attracts people from all over the world in search of harmony, and which in the history of culture and art has given rise to increasingly refined scholars of natural, human and vital forms. Leonardo with his anatomical studies, Michelangelo with his clear representations, a sort of “mortal God” in the field of representation, Canova with his boundless love for plasticity in the classical field. Jo Endoro, already defined in Italy as “the last heir of Canova in the contemporary field”, refers to the latter. The encounter with the works of neoclassical sculpture, which he had as a child, was the engine of inspiration and the stylistic torment of Endoro, who has always measured himself with the rigor of the sculptural discipline. “Perhaps painting can be forgiving, but sculpture is not” says the Italian artist, who on April 30th, 2022 will open his third gallery in Miami after Pietrasanta (Italy) and Casa de Campo (Dominican Republic).

Jo Endoro’s sculptures leave nothing unfinished and encloses everything in a very refined, studied, worked, finished representation. Hours and hours of chisel work, sense of proportion and pure beauty, with the addition of pop and social criticism. It is enough to see the series of works dedicated to the language of the hands: “The strength” in which the forearm shows its plastic power, or “To the evil tongues” in which the hand opens in a classic gesture of mockery. «In the world of essence, nothing is complicated: everything is extremely simple and therefore inaccessible to modern individuals who crave complications like victims who are in love with their executioner. The fact is that words are not needed and often the gesture of the hands is enough to communicate » Jo Endoro explains. This is therefore a reference to the first form of visual communication, which is pre-verbal, but still formal.

Jo Endoro also shows the same origin in his paintings, linked to representation and classicism. In the series of “Classical Portrait” the features of Roman emperors are intercepted as well as some mythological figures. The reference to the golden centuries of sculpture is evident, but so is the ability to question the images to which it references. Here, the faces of the powers depicted lose their ancient character of celebration and look at us almost with a questioning about their own spiritual power. A question that is the only way to restore its original power to representation, which is also seen in the series “The Armor of the Empers”. From Aurelio to Nero to Caesar we do not see faces but torsos, always made with the attention to the forms typical of an artist with a sculptor’s sensitivity: torsos covered with medals, historiated armor, evidence of power and glory, but incomplete. A sign that the seductions of the world are faced with an obstacle, an unfinished one, which reveals its transience. And Jo Endoro seems to tell us that even human glory has somewhat of a joke and a historical mockery.