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Painting and Other Fantasies
Tony Calzetta

On display in the Show Room Gallery
beginning Saturday 19 June 2021

My work is about drawing, I work in line and colour. My images are composed of shapes and forms constantly evolving from a highly personal visual vocabulary which started with subconscious doodling and automatic drawing and later using more conscious visual influences.
A lot of my work can be described as “abstract funnies” or “surreal cartoons” which fit somewhere between high art and popular culture. My interest is with image as image and I believe in letting the viewer interpret and create their own narrative.
John Metcalf has described my work in this manner, “It is the contradictions between romantic and classical, between sophistication and magic, between the spontaneous and the formal, that give Calzetta’s work its unique tension. Tony Calzetta combines impressive formal skills, strong drawing and bright colours with childlike images to create energy-filled paintings that are simultaneously playful and elegant.”
Most recently I have returned to my roots in abstraction with large scale canvases. PAINTING AND OTHER FANTASIES uses the visual elements that have evolved over the years with my intuitive sense of colour.
Tony Calzetta
Bob Shuddered At The Thought That The Art Pox Was Near
Acrylic on canvas  64 x 79 inches   2020

About the Artist

Over the last 44 years, since receiving his B.F.A. from the University of Windsor and his M.F.A. from York University in Toronto, Tony Calzetta has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions. He works mainly on canvas and paper and also sometimes in sculpture and printmaking.
He has published three major livres d’artiste; “Acts of Kindness and of Love” in collaboration with writer John Metcalf, and the more recent “How God Talks in His Sleep and Other Fabulous Fictions” and “Peculiar Practices” both with writer Leon Rooke.
Tony Calzetta was elected as a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (R.C.A.) in 2004. In addition to commissioned works he is represented in numerous public, corporate and private collections in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. In 2011, his paintings were exhibited as part of the Padiglione Italia at the 54th International Venice Biennale.
He now lives in Welland, Ontario with artist Gabrielle de Montmollin who is the other half of their art collaboration known as ART IS HELL.
Banner Image
Joseph B. Experiences Alfred E. In The W.C.
Acrylic on canvas  64 x 75 inches   2021