ARTIST FEELS BEING LOCAL HURTS IN S.D.

Alfredo Antognini would like to be recognized. He would like to know what it means for large groups of people to praise and admire his work, and, of course, to pay for it. As it is, he has a small but loyal following who cherish what he does.

And still, he said, “I feel so isolated here, so terribly, terribly isolated.”

It isn’t as though Antognini, 48, is lonely. He has a wife and a 4-year-old daughter who, like her father, loves to paint.

Antognini and his family live in a small, ramshackle house in an area of La Jolla once reserved for black cooks and domestics--servants of the rich. In one sense, Antognini (ON-toe-knee-knee) is a servant of the rich and doesn’t mind. The wealthy patrons to whom he’s sold his paintings keep his income buoyant and allow for more from an easel in a cluttered garage.

Most of his income is derived, however, from a job with the Balboa Art Conservation Center in Balboa Park. There, he restores and conserves works of art on loan from various museums, including the San Diego Museum of Art and the Hearst Castle.

Ironically, Antognini would love to exhibit in such places. The artist’s life is not just isolation, he said, but at times frustration and sadness. And despite these feelings, he says he’s a happy man.

Still, he could be happier. He says he and dozens of other artists share a nagging plight--the inability to show one’s work locally. He believes that museums, such as the San Diego Museum of Art and the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, fail to appreciate local artists--that, somehow, exhibiting the work of “an outside artist” brings, in Antognini’s phrase, “higher status.”

Barbara Fleming, spokeswoman for the San Diego Museum of Art, said many of its officials were very aware of Antognini’s restorative work at the Balboa Art Conservation Center. She admitted, however, that none of them knew of his prowess as a painter.

His wife, Maricler Antognini, recalled a conversation with a curator at a local museum.

“The woman said, ‘Are you sure Alfredo’s work will fit in? I mean, it’s so 19th-Centuryish.’ I said, ‘Hmmm, well, the last time I checked, this morning in bed, Alfredo was living, breathing--he was alive. So I think maybe he’s of this century, too!’ ”

Now a U.S. citizen, Antognini came here from Argentina in 1977. His work has been shown locally, at Anuska Galerie and at Alternative Space Gallery. The latter is no longer open, and though his show in the former drew praise and attention, neither was enough to make much of a difference artistically or financially.

“I like his paintings very much,” said Gary Alden, director of the Balboa Art Conservation Center. “I own a few of them. I can’t help saying that I’m terribly impressed--he can put in a full day’s work at the lab and still have the energy and enthusiasm to spend his evenings painting.

“He works for us four days a week, from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. We’ve tried to accommodate his needs, to give him that time to spend with his family and his painting. His own work is a gifted interplay of form and color. It reminds me of the landscapes of Edward Hopper.”

Alden describes Hopper as an American painter well-known from the Great Depression on, who specialized in interiors, cityscapes and landscapes. He said Antognini shares “the same sort of sensibility” in capturing the various ways light reflects on surfaces.

He also likes Antognini’s still lifes and beach scenes, work of a more abstract nature that sets him apart from Hopper.

“I really want to see more recognition for him as a painter,” Alden said. “I think all of us who know Alfredo, and his work, feel that way.”

As it is, Alden greatly appreciates the work Antognini contributes at the center. Antognini is hardly the kind of artist having to slog away at a job he despises--he loves the work. His title is conservator of paintings. He works alongside six conservators, examining and treating paintings and polychrome sculpture (painted wood). Such works come not only from local museums but from others around the globe.

Antognini was trained for such work in Mexico, where he spent two years before coming here a decade ago. He sometimes misses the ambiance of Mexico and the familiarity of Argentina, but not enough to return to either. He also loves Spain and Italy, from where many of his ancestors came.

“But I love it here,” he said. “I like the climate. You see, I’m a little bit like a plant.”

Outwardly, Antognini is warm, sunny, “centered,” as some of his neighbors might say. He would simply like more recognition for the paintings that fill his home like flowers in a vase.

He describes his paintings of California houses, beach scenes, still-lifes and portraits as being influenced by Cezanne, in particular, and to a lesser extent by an Italian named Morandi. In one review, a local critic pointed out that Antognini’s work lacked only the “plastic loneliness” of Morandi’s and thus, in some ways, was better.

Antognini regards Morandi’s work as “juicy and fantastic,” labels he aspires to.

“The thing I love about painting,” he said, “is getting to show your feelings to the world at large.”

Antognini came to painting from a background in philosophy. His wife, Maricler, is completing her doctorate in philosophy at UC San Diego. She also teaches sociology of art at UCSD. She and Antognini were both professors of philosophy in Buenos Aires. They finally left the country, tired of the evil ways of one too many corrupt governments. As many as 10 close friends were executed for dissent. They cross their fingers over Argentina’s current democratic government but don’t feel hopeful enough to return.

In some ways, Antognini sounds like the Southern novelist Walker Percy, who said recently that he abandoned his career as philosopher for that of novelist--he felt fiction made a bolder philosophical statement. Antognini feels the same about painting.

“I always wanted to be a painter,” he said, “but I looked at those people coming out of the School of Fine Arts (in Buenos Aires, a school he later attended), and either they looked like gods or the weirdest people I’d ever seen. Finally, I found myself among them.”

He laughed, and as he did, his body--tall and lean--shook like a sweeping broom. For several seconds, his smile seemed to linger. He looked at his work boots, silhouetted against bulky white socks. Against the heat of the day, they seemed incongruous, as suddenly, he realized his laugh did.

“Freud said artists want to be rich, famous and loved,” he said. “So? What’s wrong with that?”

He laughed again, as did his wife, while the door flapped gently in the breeze.