It’s the whisper you’ve got to listen for in Arturo Di Stefano’s paintings

One of the paintings in Arturo Di Stefano’s impressive new show at Purdy Hicks Gallery is called ‘Santa Croce’ and it depicts the arcaded cloister of the church in Florence where Giotto painted a series of frescoes. Di Stefano has not chosen to paint the obvious view — its famous black-and-white façade — but focuses instead on the cloister, where he imagines Giotto walking during the making of his frescoes. The painting is thus charged with the human presence of an artist Di Stefano much admires, a hidden presence, though real enough in the frescoed chapels behind the façade of the basilica. This is the kind of thing that Di Stefano would have been thinking about as he worked on his gloriously coloured architectural account of Santa Croce, and this is precisely what gives his paintings their emotional timbre and resonance. Although seemingly unpeopled, they are far from empty.

Di Stefano was born of Italian parents in Huddersfield in 1955, took a Foundation course at Liverpool Polytechnic, before coming to London to study Fine Art at Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Art.