Andrea Pistarino was a Piedmontese painter born in Alessandria in 1897 and who died in Turin in June 1960. Besides being a painter, he was also a preacher belonging to the Domenican Order which he joined in 1924. He was an artist with a wide range of interests, producing still lifes, landscape and sacred scenes.
He arrived in Asti in 1915, where he established his studio and began working with colours and brushes. He formed close friendship with Canuto Borelli (1852 – 1928) and Giuseppe Manzone (1887 – 1983). In the following years, his studio became a space for artistic experimentation and discussion. At the age of 23, he showed two works at the XII Venice Exhibition entitled “Figure of an Old Woman” and “Small Village”, now preserved in the Art Gallery of Alessandria.
Many of his works are now set in art galleries, civic Museums and private and public collections both in Italy and abroad. Among the works there is the painting of Asti entitled “Portrait of my mother”, originally displayed in Alfieri’s and later transferred to Mazzetti’s. The work was donated by Mario Ottolenghi and attributed to Pistarino thanks to the signature below the lower left corner of the painting. The technique used is brush painting and the work is enclosed in a carved and gilded wooden frame.
Everything he produced during his lifetime drew the attention of several critics who spoke and wrote about him and his paintings with great admiration. “His characters belong to paradise, – an earthly paradise, not Dante’s paradise, but resembling a nativity scene “(E. Zanzi); “Starting before his paintings, admiring the painter who succeeded in awakening such subtle and precious emotions, within us. It is impossible not to envy the man who found such great happiness” (G. Pacotto)
Yet there was a great absence in his life: God. He had forgotten him since adolescence, so a deep sense of emptiness got the painter. At the age of 26, he decided to join Masonry. After postponing a couple of appointments, one evening in 1923, he went out and on his way to an important meeting with the Masonic lodge, he heard the bells of San Secondo Church ringing and stopped. He entered the Church where Canon De Maria was preaching about Jesus Christ and His Church, always ready to welcome souls most in need. Deeply struck by the coincidence, the painter hid in the shadow of a column inside the church. Frightened by what had just happened, he decided to speak with someone about it. He went to the house of some friends and there he met one of the mothers, a noble and deeply faithful woman whom Pistarino would later call “his mother.” She listened to him, enlightened him, and opened before him horizons he had never imagined. The lady asked him to paint her portrait, and while Andrea outlined the face of this “mother” onto the canvas, she began sketching the face of Jesus Christ. The Great Absent had now become the Desired One.
In October 1924, Andrea, and his sister Rita, knocked on the door of the Convent of Saint Dominic in Chieri asking to consecrate his life to Christ in the Dominican Order — the order of Truth and Mercy. On the day he was attired in white as a preacher, he asked to be called “Fra Angelico” from then on, in honor of his great Dominican brother, Fra Angelico, born Giovanni da Fiesole and commonly known as “Blessed Angelico.”
On August 30, 1929, after completing his theological studies and novitiate, Fra Angelico was ordained as a priest of Christ. This did not prevent him from continuing to use colors and brushes.
He preached both from the pulpit and through painting: while with his voice he explained the Word of God, with painting he made it visible to the observants through an art “filled with light.”
Despite his talent and the enormous success, he achieved through his art, Father Angelico knew that the only success truly worth pursuing was holiness. One day, tempted to throw his brushes and colours into the river, he decided instead to speak with his fellow brothers, who advised him not to abandon his gift. He followed their advice and devoted the proceeds of his artistic work helping war victims and orphaned children. With these funds, he was able to purchase the “House of the Sacred Heart,” where orphaned children could find the warmth of a family. They also found a new mother figure there in Maria Regale, a Dominican tertiary consecrated to God through private vows.
Pistarino succeeded in turning his art into “bread for the needy ones”.
A few days before his death the artist said: “Faith, the Priesthood, and the Work of the Sacred Heart are the most beautiful gifts that Jesus and the Virgin Mary have given me. The Spirit that animates us is the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of love for the Truth. Always the Charity of Christ.”
