Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette photos Florentine artist Fabrizio Gerbino, now of Stowe, stands in front of his painting "The Passage," in his solo exhibition "Tria Prima" at 5151 Penn gallery, Garfield.

By Mary Thomas, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Fabrizio Gerbino has a story to tell that is both singular and ecumenical.

It's the story of a Florentine who moved to Pittsburgh, of a boy who learned painting at his father's knee, and of the troubling, exhilarating intangibles of human experience, the latter told through his exquisitely rendered artwork.

---

	Among the 24 paintings in Fabrizio Gerbino's exhibit is a meticulous miniature replica of Michelangelo's "Tondo Doni," above. Click photo for larger image. Video: A Florentine artist in Pittsburgh

Gerbino has been attracting attention since he arrived here in the fall of 2003, having been juried into the 95th and 96th Annual Exhibitions of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh (two of his works remain on exhibit in the latter, at Carnegie Museum of Art, through Jan. 15). He was also invited to exhibit in the "Pittsburgh's Best" exhibition of last summer's Three Rivers Arts Festival.

His impressive solo exhibition, "Tria Prima," is at the 5151 Penn gallery in Garfield through Dec. 29.

As an artist, Gerbino explains, "you can tell your unique story. You can make your contribution if you tell your story."

What he means isn't as simple as it might appear, because Gerbino implies an acute awareness of what makes up that story, a knowledge that comes only from intense consideration of self and observation of one's surroundings.

The 44-year-old artist was born in Tripoli, Libya, but was only 2 months old when his family was forced to leave as Moammar Gaddafi assumed power. They lived in Rome and Naples before settling in Florence, where Gerbino grew up.

American landscapes

To make ends meet as they tried to stabilize their lives, Gerbino's father painted American landscapes at the production rate of 50 to 100 a month for a Milanese merchant who sold them in Italy. Soon Fabrizio joined him, making his first professional painting when he was 8 years old.

By his mid-teens, he was enrolled in the Istituto Statale D'Arte of Florence, where he received classical training and was the top student, his wife, Cynthia, says. Afterward, he worked as a graphic artist, simultaneously exhibiting his work in fine arts venues.

Growing up in Florence, surrounded by historic masterpieces by the likes of Botticelli and Brunelleschi, certainly fed his aesthetic development. But Gerbino was also immersed in what contemporary artists were doing, such as the members of the Arte Povera movement, who combined everyday materials and social commentary.

Gerbino moved outside Florence to distance himself from the dominance of the city's heritage.

"You turn around and you can see Bernini. You turn around and you can see Michelangelo. It's not difficult to be an artist in Florence. I discovered another dimension. I discovered my way," he says.

In 1994, for a group exhibition, "Sarajevo," Gerbino floated the letters that spell the name of the besieged city, made of steel, in water, where they scrambled and rusted.

In 1997, he was awarded a prestigious residency at the Ateliers Hoherweg eV in Dusseldorf, Germany, and there developed the idea for a complex conceptual sculpture, "La Via," based on a Minimalist aesthetic. "La Via" began life as a half-dozen wooden, bar-like forms, made interesting by their oblique cut and curve, that Gerbino found on a discard pile. He reproduced them exactly -- 600 times, one a day for two years -- and with the craftsmanship of a jeweler sealed each beneath a fine layer of lead.

"Like a skin," Gerbino says.

These he configured into a wall-mounted, site-specific installation in 2000 at the Atelier-related Salone Villa Romana of the German Foundation, Florence. It took him 15 days to hang the work, for which he'd also hand-fashioned two stainless-steel nails apiece to hold the bars.

"La Via" continues to live, assuming fresh manifestations in response to new site opportunities.

Local connection

When Cynthia Lutz and her sister, Diane, went to Florence to study Italian in 1986, it was supposed to be for a month or two. Diane is still there, teaching at the American International School, and Cynthia stayed 17 years.

Cynthia was born in 1964 in Stowe, the Italian neighborhood on the hill above McKees Rocks. Her mother's parents had emigrated here from Greece, and her father's parents had come from Italy. She graduated from Sto-Rox High School in 1982 and earned a degree in communication arts from the University of Dayton.

As a student, she'd participated in study abroad programs in Florence and Paris and was eager to return at Diane's suggestion.

"When I went to Florence, I felt totally at home there," Cynthia says.

The sisters were able to secure work permits and kept extending their stays. In 1989, Cynthia began working as an administrative assistant to the director of the University of Michigan/University of Wisconsin study abroad campuses, located in the lavishly appointed 16th-century Villa Corsi Salviati on the outskirts of Florence.

Fabrizio Gerbino had studio space in another part of the villa. But Cynthia didn't meet him until 1991, when she asked mutual friends about the young man who was loading a painting onto a car roof rack. They began dating and were married in Stowe.

Cynthia says she'd never been homesick while living in Italy, but a series of events made them begin to consider moving to Pennsylvania. Her brother, Frank, had died in 1998, leaving a wife and two children. She and Fabrizio had a son, Gabriele, in 2000, and thought it important that he know his cousins. And then she watched the flaming towers of Sept. 11 on Italian television.

"I thought 'What was happening to my country?'" Cynthia says. "I was so sad. I love America."

Fabrizio also sees the move as providing experiences that will contribute to his artmaking, and as opportunity to explore new markets for his work.

In 2002 they came for a three-month trial, and they moved here a year later.

A factor that helped them to make their decision was the generosity of Mary Mancini Hartner, owner of Mancini's Bakery. Cynthia's mother, Deetza Lutz, says she and her late husband, Anthony, were "old family friends" of the Mancinis. When word got out that Fabrizio was looking for studio space, Hartner offered an empty building near the bakery. She became a patron, also making provisions for the family to live in an adjacent home.

Portals and cycles

Gerbino says the title of his current exhibition has spiritual and alchemical associations. "Tria Prima" is a term for the essentials some alchemists felt were needed to create everything: salt, sulfur and mercury. Prima -- "at the beginning" -- also brings to mind the religious concept of a creator.

Those are apt realms within which to consider his work, which is typically dualistic in nature and in interpretation -- representational segueing into abstraction, matter-of-fact dissolving into metaphysical, contemporary recast as ancient, absolute receding into the twilight of doubt. And all accomplished with the most dedicated commitment of mind and of hand so as to be of itself an act of ritual.

When painting, Gerbino says he sometimes feels ambivalent. "In that moment you are like a god -- because you have potential to make something great -- but you are human with your limits."

Exhibited are 23 of his evocative paintings, like the magnificent "Prima Materia" -- its lone, white-suited figure crouching within a complexly detailed industrial site, continuing a series that is as much about mystery as about contemporary alienation -- and the conceptual images of memory and presence represented in two works from Gerbino's "Cages" series, painted at an abandoned zoo.

These, and the other works, are compounded by their presentation, which, as curator Alexi Morrissey points out, makes the exhibition in its entirety an installation work, albeit one with components that also stand on their own.

Gerbino's exacting and engaging paintings are mostly hung on an intimate level with the viewer. One wall, however, displaying the "portal" paintings -- inspired by the burned facade of a church in Florence that Gerbino witnessed a decade ago -- is covered salon-style.

Next to it, somewhat referencing a ladder or bones, is an incarnation of "La Via," which stretches in 15 units to the ceiling, its lead, newly buffed by Gerbino before mounting, gaining a lustrous glow as it reacts to the gallery atmosphere.

Up a stair and beyond a second gallery is an attended chapelesque room that receives only two visitors at a time. Within the darkened space is a meticulously painted miniature reproduction, 5 inches in diameter, of Michelangelo's "Tondo Doni," an image of the Holy Family in the background of which the young St. John the Baptist is shown passing through.

Gerbino painted this seated before the original at the renowned Uffizi museum in Florence -- a privilege granted him because of his artistic excellence -- in 2003 as he prepared to leave Italy. It's representative of two months of work, applying the watercolors dot by dot for 10 hours a day. It also represents a conceptual rethinking of the canonical work and, perhaps even, touches on man's tentative post-globalization condition.

The small moments aren't wasted on Gerbino either. He points to a modest, untitled work that features a wheel with eight ray-like spokes. It was inspired by a machine, located outside a building, that from afar looked like "a monument, a sculpture," he says, complete with such archetypal shapes as circle and sun. As he looked at it, he says, he "received the story. [Sometimes] you need to wait for something to happen. Like a passage."

As in life itself? he's asked.

Gerbino confirms the vastness of the philosophical embrace. "It's beautiful. It's beautiful," he says with a smile, thoroughly aware of his moment in the here and now, of the near instantaneous passing of that moment into that portion of his mind where it begins its transformation into a story.

"Tria Prima" continues through Dec. 29 at 5151 Penn Ave., Garfield. A closing reception will be held from 7-11 p.m. Dec. 29. Otherwise, the gallery is open by appointment. Call 412-661-9296 or visit 5151penn.com.

Artist Fabrizio Gerbino moved to Stowe from Florence, Italy, in 2003 with his American wife, Cynthia, left, and son Gabriele. In the background is a portrait of Gabriele that Gerbino painted early in 2004.