Biography

Remo De Angelis, born in Roccamonfina, Caserta, on 30th  July 1926, was the second child of Guido and Ida De Angelis. He had an older sister, Anna, and a younger brother, Carlo. He was brought up in a villa in the countryside, surrounded by nature, studied humanities and moved to Rome when he was still very young. There he graduated in Law and practised as a lawyer for some time. After his marriage to Mirella Castiglioni in 1961, his daughter, Antonella, was born (1962). Soon after her birth, he separated from his wife and got divorced in 1971. In 1975 he met Annabianca Aureli who would become his partner, then his wife in 2011. The couple settled down in Rome and it was there that De Angelis focused on his greatest joy: painting. For three decades, stretching from the 1970’s to the 2000’s, the painter set up countless solo exhibitions. In particular, he made his debut on the art scene at the Romanian Academy in Rome in 1976 when his art was praised by Vanni Roncisvalle in a special cultural programme broadcast by Italian national television. Four other solo exhibitions followed at the Art Gallery Porto di Ripetta in Rome, then in Terni at the Public Art Gallery Orneore Metelli in 1996. His paintings were also exhibited at the national Museum of the Arts and Folk Traditions in Rome (2005). The painter was also invited to participate in group exhibits. He featured three times at the Galleria Borgognona in Rome and once at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaelogy where he left his exhibited painting as a gift.
During his artistic career, he made friends with countless artists and critics he would collaborate with. Giovanni Stradone and Antonio Vangelli were some of his dearest friends and they would often visit his studio to discuss about art.  Aurelio De Felice a world-famous sculptor who played a key role on the Italian art scene had been met by Remo De Angelis through a friend of his, Raoul Maria De Angelis, a journalist and a painter. De Angelis would often pay visits to Aurelio De Felice in Rome or stayed a few days in his museum-house at Torre Orsina (Terni).

De Angelis also spent time with Manlio Sarra, Tina Saletnich, Miro Bonaccorsi, Paolo Ganna, Aurelio Cicolella, Cesar Gala Miranda, painters, Doriana Onorati painter and sculptor, Sigfrido Oliva engraver and painter, Domenico Purificato well-known painter of Roman neorealism, Pericle Fazzini, sculptor, Duccio Trombadori, Franco Miele painter and world-famous critic, Nicola Ciarletta, critic, Maurizio Pizzuto, journalist, and many more. He was also friend of theatre actors, musicians, poets like Iole Chessa Olivares who published poem books and collected paintings and writers such as Enrico Panunzio.
A major role was finally played by his friend Turi Regano, an architect expert on Roman Baroque, who dealt with illustrating the pages of “Italian life-Culture and Science”, a magazine issued by the Ministers’ Committee. Regano, taking De Angelis’ artistic talent in high account, often included his works in various issues of the magazine. The mutual respect and their friendship lasted throughout their lives. Remo De Angelis died in Roma on 9 October 2014.

Painting

Focus is on light. Light comes from the matter itself, it is the essential part of his work. The painter believes physical matter contains light. Spaces, contrasts, balance and structures are the traits that make his paintings real, vibrant and at the same time archaic and primitive. Remo De Angelis’ paintings are symphonies spreading around music, rhytm and energy. They remind the viewer of the “futurist dynamism” where colors and light  dominate. A deep, sensitive mind emerges from the balance of his works. He preferred to work at night, alone with his thoughts, in a dimension he called “non-time”, where past, present and future are mixed together, at the same time. The same mixture happens while dreaming, when time is perceived in a different way and it may be possible to reach clarity of mind and emotions better than while awake. He dealt with various subjects, mostly connected with nature. Nature is the very subject as De Angelis outlined in an interview for RAI News: “[…]my works describe trees, the wild and uneven nature of my homeland during my childhood and many species of birds. Now there are only neat and cultivated fields, gardens, no more birds. I’m still wandering through nature, talking to trees.[…] (my paintings) are a celebration of nature, a defence of the environment through the soul.” This eclectic artist used different techniques such as watercolours, Indian ink and mostly oil paint.  The latter would be squeezed directly onto the canvas so that it would retain its purity and natural light. All his works are the result of hours of hard work spent in his studio which he called his “bottega”.