Stélio Scamanga belongs to a category of painters whose mental world is not confined to painting. A full fledged architect, he contributes to the practice of his art a training of mind which demands lucidity of view and method, clearness of conception, a sense of measure and number, of space and volume, an understanding of the articulation of interdependent parts in a self-sufficient functional structure, a taste for the quality of materials and the perfection of the finished product, and an imagination able to turn abstract ideas into concrete forms…. A training supplemented by a respectable artistic and mathematic culture, and energized by an adventurous, inquisitive and investigating mind.

Scamanga is, par excellence, a Mediterranean, partaking equally of western culture and of oriental culture. The characteristics of his painting derive from this twin origin, although his oriental sensibility has taken the lead, orienting his investigations towards aesthetic solutions at variance with the western approach.

At an early time of his artistic evolution, his manifesto: "Towards a New Space: The Perspective of the Abstract" (1964) did clarify conceptually the nature of his work.

However, this theory of his did not prevent him, in his peculiar to ability to overgrow himself, and a continuous artistic quest. The fact of being a self-trained artist, did preserve his authenticity and the logical development of his painting, organically linked with his life and preoccupations: from the outset, his works have been the faithful reflection of their vicissitudes.

Settling in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1952, he did paint assiduously Lebanese landscapes for more than nine years. These paintings reflect already the affirmed sense of construction, and his interest for the never ending play of light. The scenery is not an environment for human presence, but a configuration of abstract-concrete relationships.

His project of studying astronomy not materialized, he decides to study architecture, looking for the method that would bring him the intellectual discipline. His architecture probation stay in Paris (1959) made him discover a new environment, and encouraged him to risk into the adventure of art. His Parisian pictures represent sober and sharp brush-strokes set on a background of modulated light: it expresses Scamanga's mood. Two complementary approaches are already patent: the poetic approach, imbued with sensitivity of the painter of atmosphere; and the rational approach, imbued with intellectual distance. They stand as the paradigm of Scamanga's subsequent works. They show the tendency of the visionary who needs space to merge with the universe; and the tendency of the constructor who needs to structure that space.

Suddenly, in 1961, tragedy crushes into Scamanga's orderly life: his father dies in an accident. Stunned by the absurdity of the drama, he does not take up painting again for a whole year. But away from his desperate conclusion, he winds up with a renewed urge to paint. He realizes that "as life has often no meaning, the creative act, which at first seems useless, is the only useful one, because it makes one forget the tragedy of life".

His new paintings burst out like a series of distraught screams. With these "angry blows at the face of the universe" Scamanga destroys outside reality radically. The outcome are paintings produced as fits of emotional and nervous discharges : they have the irrepressible presence, the dark beauty and the ritual solemnity of a funeral song. They are the expression of the universal process of condensation of energy into matter and of dispersion of matter into energy. The revolt against the absurdity of the world, is transformed into the concretion of the universal tragedy of the cosmos.

This biographical accident will prove decisive to Scamanga's notion of the work of art. It will make him discover experimentally as it were the canvas is the focus of actualisation of pure aesthetic virtualities, without requiring the mediating agency of the representation of outside reality.

Furthermore Scamanga's insight makes him aware that the difference between pictorial traditions, lies in their conception of space. Theoretically his Manifesto "1964" : "Towards a New Space, the Perspective of Abstract" sets forth , his orientation. He calls for the conception of an non Cartesian space. This pictorial space has affinities with the modern science of Elementary Particles, as well as in tune with the age-old intuitions of oriental thought.

The pictorial evolution presents picture elements, engaged in a perpetual transformation process, with simultaneous desire of reaching the climactic nexus, the central source of light, in which they would ultimately lose themselves. This centre is as it were the unreachable ultimate truth. It does also assert the subtle colour mastery imparting harmoniously to the paintings an incredible richness of textures and modulations.

From 1965 to 1972, along in extremely logical evolution, the geometrical elements tend to get virtualised, while the chromatic elements tend to actualise themselves until exhausting the possibilities of his approach. The painting becomes the drama of one colour. It captures the volatile transcience of time. And this new aerial manner evokes music: a melody melting away into the harmony of chords, an elegiac music of time gliding by, washing out differences in the unbound stream of life and death.

However atmospheric his paintings may be, Scamanga has never given in to the temptation of facile effects. Although he never plans anything in advance, the idea growing by itself during the process of painting, retaining thus the thoughtful spontaneity that depicts so well Scamanga's working method, his paintings are constructed very strictly, even when they seem, to elude any construction.

And this chromatic virtuosity is possible only because Scamanga's mastery of colour eliminates impasto and spreads pigments evenly on the canvas with the same mightiness, delicacy and sensitivity of touch everywhere. It is a strikingly beautiful feature of these paintings that they symbolise the aesthetic experience itself, the experience of revelation.

The year of 1973, produces big sized paintings, where compact supersaturated colours surge out of the dark backgrounds: while the background falls vertically with the weight of a leaden wall its own lower part, the meteors dash in every direction. These paintings have in fact an unmistakable Japanese-like accuracy in their extreme economy of means. This oriental taste for chromatic violence gives the impression of an explosion of joy, to be set in contrast with the tragic explosion which opens the first cycle. An explosion of joy in a tragic world.

What characterizes best Scamanga's approach, beyond his will, asserted from the start, to get rid of any alien influence by elaborating sincerely and modestly an art decidedly original, contemporary and rooted in the mental universe of the Orient, in his ability to create coherent sets of emergent configurations altogether highly concrete and highly abstract. This dual movement gives Scamanga's works their aesthetic enclosure, their human weight, their artistic scope and their universal import, impact and appeal. Each one is a complete, accomplished work which does not require anything besides the apprehension of its inner laws to be adequately enjoyed. Only genuine artists achieve this authority and autonomy of the singular work of art.

Joseph Tarrab, April 1974.

Les "Icônes" de Scamanga

Les "Icônes" de Scamanga sont dépourvues de toute figuration.

C'est qu'au delà de la représentation d'un monde sacralisé l'icône est d'abord la représentation d'un espace absolu à la fois numineux et lumineux et qui tient sa numinosité de la luminosité, la lumière étant, de tous les éléments du monde sensible, le symbole le plus universel du monde divin. C'est cet espace qui absorbe le regard au point de dissoudre toutes choses, y compris les figures saintes, dans la contemplation. L'esprit est en quelque sorte happé par la couleur et la lumière qui signifient plus que les formes.

L'élément géométrique qui avait presque disparu de ses toiles précédentes, fait sa Réapparition. Mais de telle sorte qu'il a l'air d'émerger du fond même de l'espace, pour se structurer et se solidifier en bandes dont la compacité évoque celle des paradoxaux "attracteurs étranges" de la nouvelle mathématique du chaos.
C'est ce mouvement d'émergence d'un ordre structurant dans le désordre uniformisant, cette transmutation qui métamorphose la lumière du fond de l'icône en saintes figures, comme si le saint émergeait lui aussi, étrange attracteur, du fond indifférencié de la lumière divine.

Ici c'est l'expérience artistique qui remplace l'expérience religieuse, mais comme elles se rejoignent nécessairement à un certain niveau, les "Icônes" de Scamanga sont une invitation à la prière, à l'ex-tase esthétique.

Joseph Tarrab, février 1989.

Les "Toscanes"

Les "Icônes" de Scamanga avaient cette particularité et la capacité d'outrepasser les limites de la toile. Elles donnaient l'impression d'un découpage dans un continuum infini, dans une sorte d'océan vibratoire dont la surface frémissante refléterait les inégales profondeurs de fonds mystérieux.

Les paysages de Toscane, non plus, n'échappent pas à cette règle dans l'étendue sans limite, sans ciel et sans horizon de leurs champs couvrant tout l'espace de la toile et dont les partitions évoquent celles des "Icônes", mais horizontalisées, ce qui rappelle que la perspective scamanguienne est la plus part du temps verticale, le regard explorant la surface mais ne pénétrant pas à l'intérieur illusoirement comme il peut le faire avec les doux vallonnements toscans.

Ces paysages toscans, bien qu'ils transgressent le rejet du monde sensible, rendent celui-ci semblable au monde intérieur du peintre. Comme si au bout de tant d'années, Scamanga pouvait en quelque sorte s'autorisait à annexer le monde à sa peinture au lieu d'annexer sa peinture au monde. Annexion qui se déroule sous le signe de la sérénité. Ici l'âme est comme chez elle, à la fois dans la contraction de la maison et dans l'expansion des champs, dans chaque geste du peintre, chaque coup de pinceau.

Scamanga fait ici non seulement retour à la terre, après s'être réconcilié avec le monde et avec lui-même, mais aussi, à travers ses pèlerinages annuels aux hauts lieux de la peinture toscane de la Renaissance, à un équilibre intérieur capable d'intégrer sans heurts l'Orient et l'Occident, la perspective albertienne, la perspective labyrinthique et la perspective chromatique, l'univers des êtres st des choses et celui des affects, des émotions et des sentiments, la rationalité architecturale et l'irrationalité métamorphique, la fugacité et la permanence, le fini et l'infini.

Joseph Tarrab, Avril 2000.