ONE-OF-A-KIND PAINTINGS

The art career of Salvatore Lumetta began when the flowers from a sculpture of St Therese crossed the room and touched his tiny head. The frail infant, blue at birth, suddenly came alive giving out a cry and inhaling his first breath of Brooklyn air.  His Sicilian grandmother called it a miracle.

 

New York was the city that nurtured Sal as a young artist. He went to Industrial Arts High School and specialized in commercial art. His formative years as an artist began as a freelance window designer, sign painter, illustrator and eventually master jeweler.

 

Through his many life adventures from Korea, Japan, Hollywood in the 1950’s and in the American Southwest, Sal developed a deep affection for the Indigenous spirit and cultures. He decided to champion the cause of the earth’s Indigenous Peoples through his art.  In his paintings, he attempts to tell the story of the pain, hardships, dignity, character and inherent grace of peoples whose cultures and lands were blatantly appropriated from them by the various ruling forces of power and empire.

 

“I try to permeate my canvases with the heart and soul of these great Peoples. By the interplay of color, light and motion, I try to capture the emotional truth and anguish of a vanishing breed.”

 

However far-flung Sal’s travels may take him, he remains a devoted family man who gives credit for his achievements in art to those he loves dearly. “The major influences in my life are my mother and father who always had confidence in my abilities and to my dear departed wife who got me started. My always supportive son and daughter are the two people who keep me going.”

 

The bottom line on Sal Lumetta’s work is that it speaks from experience. During fierce combat in the Korean War, he gained a spiritual insight into why the Creator put us here when he witnessed “the horrors of broken bodies and broken spirits.”  Yet through it all, he found “an enlightenment on the realities of life and our connection to spirit” that he attempts to infuse into his art.

 

 

Today, Sal’s paintings are in the hands of many collectors around the country from New Mexico, California, New York, New Jersey and Texas as well as Canada and Italy.  His works have been exhibited at the Canyon Gallery in New Mexico, the Victoria Gallery in New Jersey and various other galleries in the United States.