Franco Prayer
Seemingly simple, Prayer's imagery has developed over a fifty plus year artistic career. Always a figurative artist, Prayer has used the landscape, still life and the human form in equal measure as his subjects. What has changed has been his vision from the more literal in the 1940's to the lineal of today. There are no longer the mixing or layering of colors that was his technique for so many years. Today, Prayer's vision is the essence, the simple, the form. Yet to get from there to here is not simple at all. Prayer's compositions, the thickness of the line, the geometric relationship of color to the shape and color to color has taken years to develop.
Paolo Rizzo, the art critic, states that what makes Prayer's work so unique is his use of a recognizable image in a very precise manl1er; the way he balances the composition on his canvas; and his use of bright, primary colors that give the illusion of depth or space without the use of any deliberate shading.
Natura Morta con Avocadi, oil on canvas 32”x24”
Il Bevitore,
oil on canvas 36”x32”
Interno con Fiori
Rossi, oil on canvas 36”x28”