Times of Day
March 8, 2021
“Times of Day” (1981) Edward Giobbi. Oil on Canvas. 60in diameter.
“Times of Day” by American artist, Edward Giobbi, can be viewed and explored as a work that encapsulates many of Giobbi’s artistic influences and common techniques throughout his works. The beginning of his influences can be traced to his childhood. In the town he grew up in there were different high schools that prepared the students for different paths in life. Giobbi attended the school that was focused on getting the students prepared for the workforce while the other was more steered towards the collegiate path. This suited the artist though, and recalls in an interview with Paul Cummings for the Archives of American Art (1977) that he felt it taught him valuable skills that would later benefit him as an artist.
Giobbi was eventually drafted to war, but upon returning to the States he enrolled in school for art. Although he was taught traditional art techniques at these schools, Giobbi also states in the interview with Cummings that the teachers at the schools were not influential enough for him to completely adopt their teachings into his artistic practice. He also spent three years in Italy at the Accademia di Belle Arte in Florence where he studied fresco and master artist techniques from the Renaissance eras. Italian Futurism, an artistic movement focused on presenting speed and the advancements of technology and society, was influential for Giobbi as well. “Times of Day” has a relation to speed solely because of the title itself. In the painting though, there are many sharp lines which were typical for works from the Futurist movement due to Cubist influences. His extensive formal art education allowed for Giobbi to have a vast array of knowledge, but he felt his technique and aesthetic style formed through his own experiences as an artist.
The most influential teacher and studies that Giobbi encountered was with Henry Hensche and the summer Giobbi spent enrolled at his private art school in Massachusetts. Hensche was an Impressionist teacher, with emphasis on Monet’s color theory. Monet believed that to truly paint the natural world, one had to be out in it. Painting in a studio doesn’t capture the world’s colors realistically because colors change in the sunlight. In the same interview previously mentioned, Giobbi says Hensche helped him to develop his own sense of colors. There was emphasis on colors and how they appear in nature, and so the students were instructed to paint colors first, and then add forms later.
When looking at Giobbi’s “Times of Day” there is an intense amount of color across the whole canvas, which undoubtedly is in account of his studies in Massachusetts. There are multiple circles split into twenty-two sections in flower petal esque form. These so-called petals are split by a circle which appears to separate different color compositions. The painting appears abstract, but orderly, which can be used to describe many of Giobbi’s paintings. The immense use of color and the intricate technique used is due to the teachings of Impressionism, namely Henry Hensche.
Although there is an abstract quality to this work, Giobbi did not fully commit to abstract art. In particular, Abstract Expressionism. The artist appreciated the movement and respected their desires to stray from all artistic technique and their use of color, but for himself he did not like that total lack of order. In this work, his denial of artistic anarchy is present through the forms he creates. The comparison of the wide variety of color and patterns present in this painting and the crisp lines and perfectly structured forms represent Giobbi’s artistic craft excellently.
Written by Shannon Pincheck