Rodeo Drive

TECHNIQUE PHOTO-PAINTING
The technique used was defined as PHOTO-PAINTING by the art critic Silvia Pegoraro of Ravenna Italy and was an Artist's invention in 1994. In fact, since 1964 Dario Cusani had been working with photography and painting which had never been united.
In 1994 I returned to Naples, the city where I was born and had been missing for 10 years after moving to Rome in 1984. I returned to see the MIRACLE achieved by the G7 with the Presidents of the most powerful countries led by Bill Clinton, US President. It was a wonderful visit to my city reborn in its ancient splendor! I took over 5,000 photos of the squares and monuments of Naples with my Nikon. I returned to Rome and had all the photos printed and put them on various tables and assembled all the various pieces. I immediately realized that parts were missing which I completed with paint. A spontaneous gesture with which I had unconsciously achieved a great innovation: I had combined the REALITY of photography with the DREAM represented by painting. Silvia, my muse who knew me well, when I showed her the first work IMPERATING MALE (R:0176) that I had done she said to me: "Dario you have united the TWO WORLDS of your life: that of your childhood with the sensitivity of the dreamer with the concrete one that they gave you taught your parents with education, training (degree in Economic Sciences) and work started at 15 years old in your family's copper industry. These formative years had distanced myself from those of childhood when I studied the piano and dreamed of becoming an orchestra conductor. I also drew and painted with my imagination in search of the affections I was missing as my parents were busy in the factory rebuilding Italy destroyed by the recently ended war. I then refined PHOTO-PAINTING which developed into DIGITAL PROCESSING having replaced the BRUSH with the MOUSE to fill the gaps left by the photography and complete the REALITY which with painting became another FANTASTIC reality.

PLACES OF MEMORY Cities
This work is part of the "research" PLACES OF MEMORY Cities revisited by me in a fantastic way. In fact I use my exclusive PHOTOPAINTING technique with a photographic element to which I add painting (oil or acrylic) to create a NEW REALITY.

RODEO DRIVE
I knew Beverly Hills by reputation with Rodeo Drive the main street of the city! Very famous for shopping since the 70s and this was confirmed by my sight with sparkling shop windows. In my painting I represented a corner that struck me because three roads intertwine