His father, Giulio Botteri, from Venice, had been an apprentice in the workshop of the great painter Ettore Tito.
The son Vincenzo, called “Benzo”, was born instead in Termoli in November 1945 in a house in the “Borgo Antico”.
“Benzo” is in love with nineteenth-century landscape painting in general and, in particular, the Venetian style of Favretto, Bezzi, Fragiacomo, Ciardi, and Mosè Bianchi. So you can well understand his stubborn passion for that kind of detailed nature, for that kind of brushstroke, or for that particular way of spreading the color. The atmosphere of Termoli is certainly not that of Venice, but the pictorial instinct, which leads to transferring to the canvas what is in the soul, does not need a particular setting.
Benzo’s studio, located in Via Strada di San Pietro in the “Old Village” (Borgo Antico) of the Adriatic town, is full of books, newspapers, textiles, old Termoli’s photographs, colors and many small and medium-sized paintings.
On the walls there are landscape paintings depicting the houses of the village and paintings representing the Swabian Castle that has dominated the Molise coast for centuries, and then the long beaches stretching like extended arms under the city walls and its “Trabucchi”, but there are numerous still life and several portraits of interesting invoice.
The pictorial declination varies from warm and blood tones to pure colors, from colors now strong and dense in the mixture, now transparent and impalpable in a contrast of lights and shadows, in order to create a work full of movement and authenticity.
Admiring the paintings, we can see that Botteri’s source of inspiration is one: the inflexible and intimate love for her mother Termoli.
He loves his Borgo Antico, the salty and secret atmosphere of his port. The landscape tells him the secrets that only poets or painters can understand. Nature offers itself without modesty and jealousy, entrusted as a lover and demands only beautiful and precious works of art in return.
Every summer the “Bottega” of Benzo opens the doors to the curiosity of those who, tourists or not, intend to know the artistic production of the Author.
