Italian-Chilean painter, graduate in Fine Arts from the University of Chili, based in Spain since 2001. Awarded with the Academic Excellence Scholarship in the 1991 admission process to Chilean universities. First prize in the Arte en Vivo contest in 1994 and awarded the postgraduate grant from Fundación Arte y Autores Contemporáneos in 2001. Founder of the Decinti Villalón art project in Madrid, 2003, together with Chilean-Spanish artist Oscar Villalón.
He has been a collaborator and promoter of the Ramírez Máro Institute project since 2009 together with the German artist Rafael Ramírez Máro. In 2011 he founded DeArtibus, an art project in Barcelona, up to 2013. In 2019 he founded the group El Bloque, a DeCinti Villalón project, in Mexico with Mexican artist Heder Contreras. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Europe and America.
Deeply inspired by the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Cornelio Fabro, Christian Ferraro and Étienne Gilson. In 2020 he embraced the challenge of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture to investigate and develop his work along the path of the “Via Pulchritudinis”. He actively combats the anti-Catholic black legend, historical falsification and philosophical errors that wear down Western Christian society through modernist, secularist, materialist and atheist art and culture. Contributing to the cultural counter-revolutionary movement for sound doctrine and in obedience to the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church.
2019 Junto a los artistas mexicanos Heder Contreras y Emmanuel Sierra para funda el proyecto artístico DV México, con sede en San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, México.
2012 Funda el proyecto artístico DeArtibus, con sede en el tradicional barrio de Gràcia en Barcelona.
2009 Colabora activamente en la creación del Instituto Ramirez Maro con sede en Hauset, Bélgica.
2006 Together with the Chilean artist Oscar Villalón, he founds the headquartered Santa Feliciana No. 19, Chamberí, Madrid. From the Decinti Villalón Painting Studio
2004 Together with the Chilean artist Oscar Villalón, he founds the Decinti Villalón Painting Studio based at 4 Calle del Castillo, Chamberí, Madrid where they give painting classes and strive to actively promote painting.
2003 Together with the Chilean artist Oscar Villalón he founds the Solana 12 Painting Studio, where he regularly teaches courses in Madrid, Spain. Pre-selected for the BMW Painting Prize.
2001-2003 Painting and drawing teacher at La Academia at the Chinchón and Madrid bases, where he collaborates with the digital image workshop.
2001 He is awarded a Post-graduate scholarship from the Fundación Arte y Autores Contemporáneos (Art and Contemporary Painters’ Foundation).
1996 He is awarded a degree in Plastic Arts in 1996.
1994 He begins digital technology applied to design and art, obtaining first place in the “Arte en Vivo” painting competition organised by Librerías Nacional, KLM and the Royal Dutch Embassy.
1992 He concentrates on research into painting materials and processes He begins teaching on painting courses for the Federation of Chilean Students (FECH), over 9 years in Santiago de Chile, where he becomes a teacher of painting and drawing at La Cisterna Town Cultural Centre, La Florida Town Cultural Institute, English Community Social Club, Prince of Wales Country Club, Spanish Community Social Club, Estadio Español, Israeli Community Social Club, Estadio Israelita Maccabi.
1991 He is admitted to the Faculty of Arts of the University of Chile, being awarded the Academic Excellence Scholarship in the 1991 admission process to Chilean universities.
1986 He begins to learn oil painting
Alejandro Decinti was born in 1973 in Santiago de Chile.
Themes
The artist presents a subtle connection of five great thematic cycles: theology, moralism, Greco-Latin mythology, Mayan and Mapuche mythology. He is always mindful of the major difficulty involved in each of them due to the grandeur and complexity they entail. This diversity is shared by the foundational aspect of humans’ history, culture and soul. Through the common metaphysical experience of the being, as humanity and its transcendental relationship with the reality that invades it overflows, exalting its natural sense of the divine to reach levels of supernaturalness essentially determined by the proximity of the theological truth of revelation. Research and artistic, philosophical, and spiritual development. His work dives into the wide-ranging concerns of his most personal proposal, initially dark and blurred, only illuminated by faint flashes of intuition, which has been clarified and consolidated through a work that reflects his honesty and hard work, making it a very personal contemporary painting proposal with a traditional technical and thematic approach. It attempts to delve into the original mysteries of conscience and freedom hidden in the good Lord’s unfathomable silence.
Via Pulchritudinis
In the theology cycle, he attempts to bring the Christian Eastern and Western iconographic contributions into play, gathered and updated with a personal contemporary sensibility. The artist is aware of the difficulty involved in this challenge, and chooses the main milestones of the revelation, presented in the traditional scheme of the holy rosary, to progressively broaden and perfect the proposals while going into depth into the mystery of spirituality.
Ship of fools
The moralist cycle is based on the satirical work “Ship of fools”, published in Basilea in the 15th century (in its original title in German, Das Narrenschiff; in its Latin translation, Stultifera Navis) written by Sebastian Brand. In a succession of 112 critical episodes, each accompanied by an engraving, it criticizes the vices of his time by denouncing different types of foolishness or stupidity. A reflection on the theme of evil and its foundation in human beings’ radical metaphysical freedom.
Greco-Latin Mythology
In the cycle of Greco-Latin mythology, the painter offers a re-reading of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a brilliant poetic work in fifteen books published in 8 A.D., which narrate the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar, combining mythology and the history of the time with exceptional beauty and freedom.
American mythology
In the Mayan mythological cycle, the artist seeks to represent the stories in a traditional Western styles that are depicted in the book “Popol Vuh”, also known as “The Council Book”, presumably compilation of texts and oral stories from the 16th century created by Fray Francisco Ximénez. Much of the wisdom and many of the Mayan traditions are treasured in a compendium of aspects of great importance such as religion, astrology, mythology, customs, history and legends that tell the story of the origin of the world and civilization as well as the many phenomena that occur in nature.
Chilean mythology
In the cycle of Mapuche mythology the artist relies on the exciting research work entitled “Trentrenfilú” by the Italian Alberto Trivero. He managed to travel and interview several southern Chilean settlers at the end of the 20th century and through sheer perseverance gathered the main cosmogonic myths that are transmitted from generation to generation. An ethnic group immortalized in the important 16th century Spanish epic poem “La Araucana” by Don Alonso de Ercilla, which will be the source of a new cycle of paintings on the formation of Chilean identity.
Technique
The technique consists of traditional oil paintings with added alkyd resins that provide excellent drying properties and stability to the paint layer. The colour palette is mainly based on primary and some earth colours. The backgrounds are white with primers that are usually medium coloured, sometimes cold- in bluish or greenish grays- or warm- in earth or iron oxides. The work is firmly anchored in the last 500 years of technical oil painting tradition, and includes the contribution of digital technology and photography.
For the artist it has been interesting and particularly desirable to approach these themes with a language that synthesizes and contains the great breadth of plastic and visual resources that we have been accumulating as a culture. It is the result of a lifetime study of classical works, techniques of painting, geometric and harmonic lines, with a great emphasis on the modeling of chiaroscuro. The treatment of light and composition attempts to involve the viewer and make him/her participate in the scene that appears vividly and intensely before his/her eyes.
Aware of contemporary artistic values but very respectful of the rule of personal artistic sensitivity, the painter has found it necessary and essential to approach this way of “good work” from the perspective of the traditional craftsman, as a way of keeping the taste for this noble and ancient- but always current- craft of painting alive.