Chat with Italia's genius Balsamo...

WACM: Some forty years ago, you left your town and you went to Roma to explore the possibility of exhibiting your paintings. You were not known yet. It was tough to succeed right away and to become famous. One Italian art critic and historian wrote about your first visit to Roma and about the young Vincenzo." I am imagining him getting sad and crazy and taking the first train back to his village." Do you remember this? How difficult it was for you to become accepted by the high society and critics circle in Roma? How many times, did you decide to go back home and forget all about it?

Balsamo: I was 14 years old when I "moved myself" to Rome. I was living with an aunt in my town . I had made that choice because I was trying  of creating a stable job that would  allow me to live and take care of my family. I have already lost my father when I was 11 years old. I had to abandon my studies  and look for work. I found one at the studio of the painter  Acquaviva, my first true master. And I did not know, back then, that painting would have become my true occupation. Sure I began and continued to paint and to learn the art of painting by  copying landscapes, still lives, "nature mortes", postcards etc. This is how I started...very modest beginning.

Sure, I remember what that critic wrote about me when I moved to Rome. It is perhaps true what Ugo Mannoni wrote about my first days in Rome. For a young person like me, it was not easy to break through and enter the world of art from the grand front door. Thanks to some friends and  with the help of Calabrian Michele, the founder of one of the first  art establishments in Rome and magazine Il Poliedro, I was introduced to remarkable Italian schools,  artists and masters like Scuola: Mafai, Scipione, Pirandello, Omiccioli, Monachesi Saints, Vangelli, Afro, Fantuzzi, Guttuso, as well as to poets and writers  I often love to remember: Sandro Pen, Alfonso Cat, Renato Cakes, Pier Paul Pasolini etc. All these acquaintances allowed me to persevere in my career as a painter and exhibit my work in Italy and in many museums in Europe. You can say, friends and contacts helped me take off.