Colosseum

Colosseum, Acrylic on canvas 95 x 77 2005

“Man has pitted himself against \himself since the beginning of human time.” -G.

What would it be like to fight in a Roman colossum? Here Giovanni paints the colosseum over a background that resemblesSaint Peter’s Basilica. An irony of juxtaposition: Roman death in front of Roman’s holiness. The gore of the colosseum itsel takes on almost a psychdelic form, aslant, as if floating in space and not part of the normal order of things. Inside the bowl of the colosseum, a choas of dead bodies from Auschwitz lye in agony and slain. Giovanni’s vision of death here is unusual: it is painted not in colors of death, but in a calm mixture of bright tones. It is a death that is not grotesque which is dream-like and even cosmic.