Piedmontese Artist – Gianni Gaschino

Piedmontese Artist

Gianni Gaschino

Gianni Gaschino is a Piedmontese artist living in Guarene, Piedmont who is self-described as a kind of painter not so easy to find elsewhere. In fact, it’s rare to find a man with a prestigious master in engineering, performing for decades in the role of sales director for many large international companies and, at the same time, able to succeed in emerging in the art scene as an esteemed and appreciated painter.

Gianni Gaschino is able to couple strict technical requirements dictated by his formation in his managerial career to the large and free vision dictated by pure inspiration of art through personal art exhibits in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. He has been doing this successfully for more than 50 years with paintings illustrating Italy all over the world.

Let’s find out more about Piedmontese artist Gianni Gaschino and what inspires his artwork. Gianni in his own words…

When did you become an artist?

It’s difficult to find a starting point for this kind of thing. I have always been attracted as a kid by drawing. I was amazingly good at drawing all mechanical means, cars, trucks, planes, ships, trains and so on and I knew that I was good, simply by comparing my works with the ones by schoolmates. Growing up I started adding colours and the subjects turned to whatever impressed my young imagination. I remember the first of my works obtaining public recognition when I was 12 years old and the class attended a circus session in the afternoon: The day after, my art teacher asked everyone in the school to express (with a painting on paper) the circus impressions in total freedom. Surprisingly or not, my work resulted the best and I was given a small prize in a public reunion with kids and parents. Needless to say, I was enormously boosted by this simple episode so that, answering the question, I can recognize this as the starting point for my art journey which is still running fast since those days, after so many years.

My art is all mine. I like to underline that I am a totally self-taught painter. I have never had one course or a lesson. No influences or schooling or given style. I have always painted like I do, never copying or adhering to an external pictorial tendency.

Il Bello della Riviera

If you could go back in time, what period in time would you have liked to live as an artist?

Art is flowing through the centuries with evolutions and revolutions. Each period has its own history, its inner beauties and delights. Each one would be worth living in. To be honest, I admire every piece of art produced by old Greeks, masters in harmony and perfection. Same qualities adsorbed and revitalized by the old Romans. Yes, I would like to be transplanted into one of the studios frescoing the villa’s rooms in Rome or in Pompei. Sharp colours, classic elegance, expressive spirit, total freedom and most of all enchanting beauty!

How would you characterize your artistic style?

Through my classic studies (liceo classico) I had the unique opportunity to meet Professor Riccardo Chicco, he himself is an important painter of the famous pre-war “scuola di Torino”. He highly appreciated my first works and encouraged me to exhibit, to go out and show my work. So he influenced me showing me the practical way to open to public . I owe him my career, otherwise, I probably would have been condemned to stay inside my studio. In the span of three years of highschool, thanks to his lessons, I had a comprehensive review of all history of art (architecture, sculpture, painting) through the centuries up to our current days. Each great artist has given me emotions, each one is inside my soul and talks to me any time I am in front of a white canvas…with emotions inside to be expressed. I think that all Renaissance Italian masters have had a great influence on my approach to painting: solar colours, neat elegant lines, scenic order and formal synthesis.

aerial view of Barbaresco and the vineyards by Piedmontese artist Gianni Gaschino

In Cielo a Barbaresco

How would you describe your artwork?

Lately, my art focuses on landscapes, preferably the ones I enjoy around the places I live. The Piedmontese hills, the Alps, the Ligurian Mediterranean Sea and its coastlines. Our hills, the Riviera, the Alps give me emotions and I try to catch the essence of a vision playing with forms and colours in a mosaic of simple geometries. Inside the mosaic I lay flat colours and the many squares of the mosaic, one to the other, build up the vision. It is as if different stains of different colours cooperate to build up the final vision.

Being a pilot, I often reflect the aerial third dimension on my works…the one you miss painting from the ground. From the sky the vision enlarges and expands to expose you to the horizon, the rows of hills, plains and villages, castles, houses, rivers and the Mediterranean Sea.

This is and has been my style. The result is classic and modern at the same time. No abstractions since I paint what I see. No manicured shaded colours as in the classic or academic painting. In the end, the work has an elegant layout with a sharp graphic frame. This is surprisingly highly appreciated by young generations who often like to see in their homes something modern but different from dominating abstractions.

From the opinion of my estimators, my art brings a calm, reassuring and cheerful approach to life. A kind of art far from the smelly claustrophobic darkness of enclosed dusty studios, far from the mess of complicated easels, free and flying high through skies far and beyond.

What influences your artwork?

Inspiration comes to me basically from nature: from visions when I travel, far of near my place. I appreciate the widely recognized Italian beauty of her lands: Luckily, I live near the Langhe, Roero and Liguria so much beloved by persons who travel from all over the world to visit and stay. So, it is easy for me to discover places which enchant and inspire my spirit for their gracefulness, often an unspoiled perfect match between what was built by men and the nature around it. This perfect match was called “genius loci”.

My artwork originates from observing, catching a viberation inside, imagining, taking the vision inside, then expressing it on canvas maybe much later, so to deplete the vision of all insignificant details, but concentrating on what produced the soul vibration or in better words…the inside emotion.

What advice can you give aspiring artists?

To new young artists, I recommend never to copy. They have to try hard to distinguish themselves if what they intend to do and express is really something new in the art arena. I would suggest not to repeat what is already around just because this is what is around and what people expect to see. The real innovators in art have been (and are) the few ones who had the courage and the vision to swim upstream. Obviously, all new artists want to express what they feel inside but this is not always enough to emerge and the result can be frustrating.

In a world where everybody is an “artist”, where the most common and accepted way of expressing (the “abstract” in its several streams) is materially quite easy as a technique, not needing any of the traditional required skills, the only really necessary quality to be called “artist”, the quality which makes the difference is the personality and the way of expressing inside emotions. My advice is: be original, different, do not inspire to be anybody already successful in the market, try your own path and persist.