NEW YORK — “It’s not about the girls,” says artist Eneas Capalbo, “it’s about the faces.” But judging from the 40 graphite-on-paper portraits going on display at the Valentino boutique tonight, an impressive number of names from the social set have sat for him — among others, Marjorie Raein, Cornelia Guest, Tory Burch, Amanda Hearst and Margherita Missoni.
Argentinian-born and raised in London and New York, the 30-year-old Capalbo is a popular figure on the social scene, popping up at parties thrown by the likes of Yvonne Force Villareal or Allison Sarofim. But his day job is painting at his downtown studio or drawing at his Upper East Side apartment, where he painstakingly creates his portraits with a camera lucida. Using the contraption, which allows him to project an image onto paper, Capalbo often makes up to 10 versions of his pencil drawings, destroying the unsatisfactory ones (“I don’t erase,” he explains).
The technique, which some believe artists like Ingres and Caravaggio employed, fits right in with Capalbo’s dual inspirations: the oeuvres of the Old Masters and Andy Warhol’s portraits. “It’s the same thing, really,” he points out. “Society ladies.”
Indeed, he has both kinds of work hanging in his home, near a photograph of himself with Stephanie Seymour, a friend he made years ago when he did a similar drawing of her husband, Peter Brant.
The self-taught Capalbo, who will have a show at Chelsea gallery Newman Popiashvili in January, also does fantastically tongue-in-cheek “portraits” — essentially names spray-painted onto monochrome canvases. Jane Holzer, for one, owns such a piece. “I don’t understand why people want portraits,” says the artist. “A big picture of yourself in your home. But they do.”