The Chetana art Gallery provides us with the opportunity of viewing paintings done by the Italian painter Domenico Molinari. The exhibition which began on Monday will be on until Saturday June 30." Montmartre ",where the painter is currently residing, is often considered the " heart of art and painting " in Paris. One would be little surprised then if one opened the lexicon of painters to find twenty artists by the name of Molinari who lived between the fifteenth and twentieth century. Domenico Molinari however, born in 1947 in the highlands of Potenza, 300 km south of Naples. The name "Montmartre " also brings to mind the association of the place with one of the finest cathedrals here. Thus the great psychologists who emphasised the impact of one's surrounding on one's future, could hardly be wrong, and we see evidence of that in the person of Domenico. The account of his first brush with art is as colourful as his work and the place that he comes from. As a little boy he was one day playing in the attic of his parents house when he found, as if waiting for him, a series of aquatint-engravings of the famous Durer in an old card box. This unusual discovery is said to have enchanted him up to the point of sealing in him his artistic vocation. And as a tribute to the place which was in part responsible for his artistic temperament, Molinari first painted his environment ;he portrayed persons close to himself and did a self-portrait as well, at the age of twenty. The artist did not receive in formal training in art. Naples, Rome and Florence were parts of his itinerary. If Molinari settled down in a place that inspired the artist in him, he also gave something back of it. In the streets of Paris he invented a new form of pictorial art, one that we know of under the title of Sculpturalism. In this process, he first prepares a sticky pulp which he moulds in order to obtain the classic figures that one see on his canvases. Coming from a place like Italy, two themes dominate Molinari's frame of mind - nature and religion. Thus one finds horses, boats, rivers, the Crucifixion and dancers as well in his art works. The thick pulp that he uses gives the figures their life-like quality, while his colours blend into rainbows, hallos, can be termed divinze light as well. Each painting is conspicuous by the presence of an ethereal glow. In the Crucifixion, Christ is seen bathed in a whitish-yellow light pouring down from the top of the canvas. The lonely boat on the river seems to be journeying towards the horizon, towards eternity, towards the rainbow, towards light. Dancers leap into the air and Molinari captures them with a leg high in the air, the twirl of their flared skirts, the circular movement of their arms. As for the horse, the muscles in their arched necks, the tendons in thir hoofs - all these tiny details come alive in the solid pulp. Regates is a picture of a boat race the waves tossing the little sail boats to-and-fro. Only the different coloured sails can be seen above the waters. Other themes include Don Quichotte, le Message Eternel ( St. Peter being taken up to heaven). Some of his works achieve a texture similar to that of perforations. The artist's studio and his preferences while working convey much about the kind of person that he is. Armand Felsen says that his studio is " topsy-turvy with oil-benzine canisters, tins filled with argil, colour-tubes and vaporisers spread over the floor and the shelves. In the lightless room moves an enormous dog, the favourite of the neighbours, who enjoy being part of the everyday spectacle of Domenico's atelier (workshop). The studio or better still the yard is situated next to the street and it is early always open ; The painter prefers to work outside, in front of the door, in order to take....