You can see Umberto Crenca’s “Divine Providence” at the WaterFire Arts Center Gallery now through Nov. 12.
TRANSCRIPT:
The gallery at the WaterFire Arts Center is filled with more than 200 of Umberto Crenca’s paintings in his “Divine Providence” series. He started the paintings in February of 2020 and he’s still working on the series. Crenca is best known as one of the founders of AS220, an uncensored, unjuried art and performance space in Providence. He also led the organization until his retirement a few years ago. AS220 was inspired by a manifesto that he worked on with a few artist friends in the early 1980s.
Umberto Crenca: We condemned everything in the art world – all museums, all art schools as being interconnected, hierarchical and all of this. And that art should be supported and should be uninhibited, and any and everybody should have the opportunity to be able to participate. And that’s basically what it was. And I mean, we condemned everything. Somewhat poetically.
Crenca’s collection of paintings in “Divine Providence” reflects that anti-institutional ethos. They depict the everyday urban fabric of his hometown. Mostly the two- and three-story multi-family homes in the various neighborhoods of Providence, with a few neighborhood stores and the occasional mill building. Instead of focusing on one building at a time, the perspective is often on the spaces in between the buildings, as the different roofs and walls intersect in the frame. The paintings are arranged on the walls mostly in chronological order of when they were painted.
Crenca: This is the first one, and that’s out the window of my gallery at home. And my neighbor’s yard.
James Baumgartner: It’s just your backyard, your neighbor’s yard, a shed, a couple of recycling bins, a couple of trash bins.
Crenca: Yeah. You know, electric lines and trash bins have been common more than anything else in my paintings. I think it’s like my signature thing. … If you have evolved as an artist, composition is first, you know. Theme, narrative, all of these other things, that’s really secondary to, and it’s subject to composition. A strong composition will speak to people, independent of what their knowledge is, or an academic background in the arts or any of that stuff.
There are a handful of recognizable buildings like Providence City Hall, but they aren’t depicted as “important landmarks.” For example: a church steeple peeks out from behind a house, and there’s a parking lot next to the Wedding Cake House.
Crenca: You know, in terms of what I’m trying to achieve here, a certain intimacy, a pedestrian perspective. We don’t, that’s the only time we ever see the world. Driving the car, we don’t see the world. But that is a lot of people’s reality, walking through neighborhoods, walking to their place of worship, walking to their bodega, walking to the neighbor’s house, walking to a friend, walking to the park, you know, and what are they experiencing? But to me, it was kind of to highlight and elevate the commonplace. The things that the vast majority of us experience in our daily lives, but maybe sometimes take for granted and don’t really appreciate that there’s this beautiful texture, this beautiful story about people’s lives and the places and architecture that kind of support human existence in the urban environment. I don’t paint in the country. I don’t know the country. That’s not my place. This is my place.
Although Crenca got his start as an anti-institutional rabble rouser, his art is now part of the permanent collection at the RISD Museum, he’s received honorary doctorates from Brown and Roger Williams University, and he’ll be honored tonight at the WaterFire FireBall gala with an Impact Award.
Crenca: I feel very fortunate and humbled by a lot of the attention that I’ve gotten. But everybody deserves it. Everybody should feel confident about who they are, and what they contribute. And everybody should find a way to celebrate or be celebrated. You know, I will continue to paint, I will continue to tell the story of Providence. It’s a story I know best. But there are a lot of new young artists that are demanding some attention and whose voices need to be heard. And they need to be supported in the same way that I’ve been supported all these years.
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