Kay Calandruccio, American, b. 1989

Phidian Frieze

2024

Ink on paper

Commissioned especially for exhibition at the Palm Beach Atelier in March of 2024 and contained within an important late 19th century American frame from the Eli Wilner collection, this drawing takes its inspiration from the 5th century BC Greek Panathenaic Frieze of the Parthenon.  The Parthenon horses’ layered, rhythmic forms follow in a tradition from ancient Egypt and Assyria.  The ink and washed paper also harken to mankind’s earliest pictorial representations on cave surfaces particularly the renderings of animals at Lascaux.  When viewing these recently rediscovered prehistoric paintings in the 1950s, Picasso is credited with saying “We have invented nothing.”  Kay Calandruccio’s line drawing at once strikes clear, classical chords but also with a modern primitivism in the tradition of Mississippi Gulf artist Walter Anderson, a hero of the artist.