Label Type
DidacticLabel
Frank Rampolla is best known for his expressive figurative paintings and prints that respond to the human condition, particularly involving the tumultuous events of the 1960s. Grotesque, shocking, and emotionally charged, nude bodies undulate in frenzied, rapturous hunger, seeking contact with one another to circumvent the space around them. Rampolla’s figures, like Untitled (Male Nude), are rendered viscerally and without pretense; they exist as they are: wholly human, unashamed of their intensity, yet still beautiful. His son Renato Rampolla describes his work as transcendent of current events, holding–and perhaps gaining–relevance as time goes on. Renato explains of his father’s work, “It’s just, how can humankind be so cruel to humankind? That’s what it was about.”