Adamo Modesto is an artist of outrageous strength, impressive style, and with 

incredible amount of talent and knowledge. When I say that, it isn’t just the question of courtesy towards this undoubtfully prestigious and, above all recognized artist, but together with that my most sincere opinion about his work. Art is something that almost always tries to lead us into dilemmas. But one thing that simply cannot be brought into question is the authentic power of Modesto's work.

It is amazing how many different techniques and disciplines this artist uses: painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography, digital art, web design... a whole new world is built into Modesto's pieces of art.

However, what is also or even more impressive certainly is the fact that this artist is quite easily recognized among all the others, which is a result of his originality. No matter what the field of creation is, you will have no doubts when it comes to his shapes, colors, valers, light and obscurity, mysterious meanings, his almost magically hidden multi-expressiveness, strange way of leading emotions from those silent and shy ones, to the furious passion and, finally, charm and lightness that are part of his personality.

Here, of course, whether we like it or not, we are to discuss the magic of arts, or maybe even poetical magic of arts. Many people could probably relate that to the common definition of art that Rembo, and sometime later Malarme promoted, as well as the group of artists and philosophers that gathered around them, or around panels that were a lot like them, such as well known artists and philosophers Jung, Valeri, and many others. On the other hand, in Roman art, especially the one on the territory of today's Italy, that sense of strange magical poetry has been present since the ancient times till the times we live in. I certainly cannot forget to mention, that only applies to the most genius artists- from Giotto, and maybe even from Petroni all the way to this very day.

Am I being careful and not too direct in saying that Adamo Modesto is a genius artist? No. I am doing it in the most direct way, no matter how that might seem rude and not ethical. Of course, that I do in the most descent and critical way, totally in the context of the topic I am writing about. We have been taught that, for that kind of opinion what we need is a time distance, and, now and then, I agree with that. Still, even if I didn't, we could easily conclude that that kind of time distance clearly exists.

Modesto began to appear in public before I was born (and for a long time I have considered myself a middle-aged man).

In addition to all of this, the thing that is fascinating about Modesto is his superior attitude in dealing with emotions. Every piece of his work is a new eruption of sincere, genuine, and most of all, unexpected emotions, and, at the same time, colors and shapes are in such order and harmony which could be considered cold and precise. One real modernistic question has been asked, in the style and spirit of modernity how Hugo Fridrih used to say: “How come there is so much fire in that ice?" I believe that the question is definitely reasonable and I often ask myself the same thing, but not the visitor of my site, or Modesto's exhibition... Simply, that question just...exists. Shapes in art pieces are logical in some way, colors are too, functionally connected according to the logic of shapes, light, valers, everything. Everything indeed has its own inner logic which also deepens from elementary logic of work. The word "logic" is used here only in esthetical meaning, or even better, in strict art meaning and not in any other way.

© Nikola Kitanovic, 2002