Ekphrasis

John Varriano has always been always been enamored with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has made thousands of trips there to study paintings and sculpture.

During a time spanning the late nineteen nineties and early two thousand, he would frequent the cocktail lounge at the main hall terrace, where Dante, the subject of this painting, would play classical guitar.

Varriano has played guitar since his childhood and is particularly enamored with classical guitar music. It was natural then, for him to take his pencils and pastels to the location, and create drawings while enjoying the music.

He made many beautiful renderings of Dante, primarily in pastel, from which he created this painting. This is a stunning example of the artist’s figurative expressionism. The colors are hyper-real and extend beyond the borders of natural color representation. The shapes are big and bold, and the overall feeling of the painting is full and rich.

In time Dante was replaced by a classical string quartet, and for several years, Varriano would go there to make numerous drawings of them as well.