When Mr. Morrone is not officiating as the Mayor of the very well know travel destination of Positano, Italy on the Amalfi Coast, he paints.

This is a new experience for Mr. Marrone. It is his first trip to the United States but not his first art opening. When his work is displayed in his home country, it challenges the quiet and serious tradition of the bureaucracy of his position as mayor, and sets him up for public discussion. His friends and countrymen see this as a heroic deed.

Domenico Marrone has created a series of personages who fully occupy their space. They have an explicit physical mass, they look at us in their stolid silence. And even as we walk away they continue to observe us, they reawaken our discomfort, our wonderment, our need to communicate. These are the day to day local scenes of politics, actors and singers, all with the style of pure fantasy and great use of color.

Alan Frenkiel speaks of Marrone's work as having an "unrelenting gaze". Painting has the capacity to mirror our thoughts, our feelings, to penetrate our emotions, to elicit memories. When we look at a portrait, in a successful work of art, the portrait looks at us. It has presence, it wants to be recognized, to be identified, to provoke, evoke, satisfy and converse. This is exactly what we get observing Marrone's paintings.

It is very fitting that Mr. Marrone comes to Lambertville to show his work at the Peggy Lewis Gallery. This past summer Mr. Marrone dedicated a Piazetta or little square to Mrs. Edna Lewis, the founder of the Positano Art Workshop. Mrs. Lewis was the mother and mother-in-law to Michael and Peggy Lewis who both resided in Lambertville and where involved with the art scene of the river towns for over 40 years. The Peggy Lewis Gallery is a non-profit gallery promoting the arts with shows and programming at the Free Public Library of Lambertville.

Edna Lewis traveled to Positano in 1952 and a year later founded the "Positano Art Workshop", a school of painting and sculpture attended by young people from all over the world.

She contacted teachers in the most famous Italian academies, among these Angelo Savelli, Piero Dorazio, Achille Perilli and Ibrahim Kodra joined Peter Thomson (recently deceased), Eugene Charlton and Randall Morgan.

A generation of young artists, mostly from the United States, attended the Worksop which thus became an international artisitic point of reference and which contributed to making Positano famous throughout the world.

Edna Lewis died in Positano in August of 1972 having dedicated her life to the diffusion of art. With her death the experience of the Art Workshop came to an end. However, she made a last act of affection to Positano by leaving in her will her collection of art to the commune of Positano. This work can be viewed at the municipal building in Positano which of course is the office of Domenico Marrone.

If you have the chance to travel to Positano, you can see the little square in front of the church of Santa Caterina with a plaque dedicated to the memory of Edna Lewis.

For further information:
Please contact Ogden Kruger
215-534-5114

The Peggy Lewis Gallery at the Lambertville Library,
6 Lilly Street, is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday 1-9; Tuesday and Thursday, 10-9; Saturday, 10-5.
For further information, call during library hours 609-397-0275.