How It All Began

“It was in 1997, when a 1000 Lira banknote (Italian currency at the time), landed in my hands bearing a simple phone number. That was the beginning of everything – “If words and money could be reconcilable, why not reconcile art and money?” From that moment, somewhat by chance, somewhat for fun, I started playing and experimenting with these banknotes full of history.”

This initial “playing” with his first banknotes, led Antonio Natale to the discovery of a brand new world; a magic world full of potential stories that could be told thorough his art. Antonio decided then to obtain out of circulation banknotes from the world over to turn them into a mirror of time and space, where he would reveal himself and his surroundings. A matter where he could dive deep, filter, change and create history using the once sublime and powerful paper notes as his canvases. Sometimes he would exalt the banknote, sometimes he would complement it with strokes of paint, acrylics or pastels.

“Out of each banknote I create theatrical scenes, a unique artwork surrounded by a passe-partout. On the back of each artwork, I build windows allowing the spectator not only to see the back side of the original banknote, but also to discover a magic and enchanted world as light reflects through it.”

“I allow my vivid imagination to run free on these banknotes enabling me to transmit the mutation of the images, blending in an original combination of colors, structures, feelings, paradoxes, economics and consumer products, politics and history, customs and societies, literature and comics, film and TV, reality and dream, and sometimes an overlapping of the present and the future.”

In a dynamic language that covers and uncovers, dissolves or merges the pre-existing elements, Antonio Natale expands the different styles of POPULAR ART, NEW DADISM, and NEW REALISTS; the incessant references to classical myths and quotes from social realism.

“I paint since I was a child; ever since I was in elementary school, and the only way to communicate with the outside world for me was through my paintings.