CURATORIAL STATEMENT

The most significant piece of work Carlo Pittore created in his lifetime was Carlo Pittore, and he was a piece of work.

Born Charles Stanley, ‘Carlo Pittore’ was a fabricated identity created by a young Jewish kid from Long Island. During a pivotal stay in Montecielo, Italy, the local kids followed Charles shouting ‘Carlo, Pittore!’ - ‘Carlo, the painter’ - and for Charles, that moniker stuck. Much like a vacationer who never wants to return home, Charles took on an identity that allowed him to be forever outside of himself. He often presented as a bit of a buffoon - loud, over-the-top. His art became the art of self-promotion, his likeness plastered in and on everything he could dream up - from paintings to drawings to postcards to video to masks to magazines - all in an effort to understand himself and in so doing, to encourage others to do the same.

Carlo loved food and flesh and wine and opera. He was passionate. What most didn’t see was the depth of self-reflection, the extreme self-doubt. The demons. The inner battle with mild addictions – cigarettes, weed, alcohol – none of which overcame him. He was a very human being who struggled to find connection and longed for adoration. He was finding his way at a time when being a gay Jewish man from Long Island wasn’t an easy option. The pressures and constraints he put on himself were astounding.

The one arena in which Carlo felt truly free was in front of the canvas. In painting, he found his most enduring love. To Carlo, life was painting. Painting was life.

I never met Carlo. I became involved with his work after he passed. For the past fifteen years, I’ve immersed myself in everything he created. One of his most significant works is the mural, La Buffonera - Carlo’s meditation on the life of the artist. Nearly every character under the Big Tent is the same person – the boxer, Steve Nusser. To Carlo, an artist had to be everyone, do everything, to realize his goals. The boxer also signified how he often felt about being an artist - the bruises and blood and sweat. The total exhaustion. But also the idea of becoming a champion. A contender.

Carlo’s self-portraits are some of his strongest works, which makes sense. His identity was his medium. He was consistently playing and defining what it meant to be an artist – mostly based upon his experience and adoration for the old Italian Masters, filtered through the time of the xerox machine and multiples and the International Mail Art Network.

The strength of Carlo’s work can be difficult to convey. Some pieces feel more like performance relics than fully realized artworks. They are evidence of an attempt at connection - residue from the effort of creating the entity ‘Carlo Pittore’ – one of the most significant artistic figures the state of Maine has ever seen.

Sarah Bouchard, 2023