It is in the bronze that Greg Wyatt melts classical and modern style, European cultural traditions, but also American and South – American to give birth to a “public art, socially involved” - if we think at the monuments he gave to the St. John the Divine cathedral in New York, or to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington 's cemetery, at the State Department of Washington - “based more on the research rather than on achievement of artistic principles, and that encourages more the exchange of thoughts than the transmission of a unique thought.” as Austin Quigley, Dean of Columbia College of Columbia University di New York, says.
Every sculpture insert itself on a dramatic abstract-shaped material, together with the classical purity so harmonious in its lines and within forms of the plastic language of masters from the past centuries.
The trace of the great masters of Italian Renaissance is then unmistakeable: the torsion of the figures that try to get out from the same material is an evident heritage of Michelangelo and of Mannerists, in particular that of Giambologna, with whom Wyatt is connected in a relationship master-pupil, after more than 450 years, in his goldsmith 's care he puts in the bronze sculpture, which sometimes becomes exceptional, a masterly chiseled work of art.
In the sculptures of this American artist shapes of enormous beauty comes out from an undefined material, dramatically corroded, very expressive, from whom blossoms a dream of infinite beauty.
It has then a particular meaning the Florentine exhibition to him dedicated – to Wyatt Florence is like a second hometown – in Palazzo Vecchio, a few steps far from the “Perseus” by Cellini, the “David” by Michelangelo (even if that is a copy) and the “Rape of the Sabines” by Giambologna and from other extraordinary expressions of the great Florentine, Greek and Roman artistic heritages.
In this occasion, Wyatt realized a monumental sculpture 4,70m high named “Two Rivers”.
It's a manifesto work of art, recalling the two rivers, the Hudson – where the artist was born – and the Arno – on which banks arises Florence. These two rivers come out from a non-shape as opposite shapes, a masculine and a feminine, following a spiral that goes towards the infinite: “captured in a second of equilibrium these two shapes indicate the sense of complementarity of the opposites”, quoting R. J. Williams, Lecturer of Art History at the University of California in Santa Barbara.
It is the representation of the meeting of different civilizations and eras, of different souls and sensibilities, which metaphysically cooperate to gain a common aim, to complete one in each other.
As observed by Walter Liedtke, responsible of the European section of paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York “the desire of imitating and to honor great European artists and to include more generally the entire Western artistic tradition bringing it into a new territory, is and it has been for a certain period a typical American concept, even conscious or unconscious. This need reflects a deep sense of our European roots, and not just as a homeland of our ancestors”.
This aim is very strong in Wyatt's art, which, following the path traced by the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin, wants to reinvent and actualize the distinguished and eternal language of the classic canon.
The sculptor finds his inspiration in European literature too, as in the oeuvre of Shakespeare to realize for example the statue in Stratford-upon-Avon. He chooses to realize Shakespearean characters so tormented and well-worn, as Hamlet or Macbeth, figures recalling ancient mysteries, those of “Midsummer night's dream”, a drama reshaped in allegorical and lyrical terms.
Also classical ballet – artistic language relatively recent born in a European context – is a source of inspiration for the sculpture that, with a mastery technique, makes us aware of the knowledge of the artist in terms of human anatomy. The dynamic movements reaching the apex of dramatic tension in a jump towards the stage, executed by the great etoile Mikhail Baryshnikov.
Wyatt extends his research of inspiration also in antique civilizations, to the Greek mythology or, on a merely sculptural field, reconnecting – in a very suggestive and a little subtle way – to the figurative arts of the Old World, in particular to those around the Mediterranean Sea: from this world come vase made in bronze recalling the human shape speaking a mysterious language coming from thousands of years ago.
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