First published: Winter 1998
It is hard to miss the two most distinctive characteristics of Domenico Zindato’s exuberant drawings, namely the meticulous draughtsmanship of their detailed, meandering patterns and, by means of this subject matter alone, the expansive vision of a mysterious, painted world that they depict. For Zindato’s imagined, artistic universe is one of primordial or maybe mythical powers and, at the same time, of more contemporary, restless, unspecified forces; of vaguely ancient spirits bucking up against a modern sense of yearning and Eros; and of a gentle tug of war between enduring symbols of magic and belief (hands, eyes, snakes, flowers) and the alluring but impenetrable language of dreams.
Each of Zindato’s pictures is a window onto the ever-shifting corners of this world of swirling colour and flowing, elegant, abstract pattern. Like other self-taught artists who have used well-elaborated pattern and the expressive power of the drawn line to develop powerful visual languages (Adolf Wölfli, Marc Lamy and Madge Gill come to mind), Zindato has evolved a style that is uniquely his own.
This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision #58
