Art: Men, Women & Horses

Heroic subjects are not fashionable among U.S. artists. But exuberant Jon Corbino, who this week opened an exhibition of turbulent canvases on Manhattan's 57th Street, loves to paint conflicts and catastrophes, swarming canvases in which full-blown nudes and horses writhe and rear in the throes of floods, shipwrecks, stampedes. And gallery-goers like his smoldering color and sweeping draftsmanship, which make the most innocent New England landscape seethe with dramatic struggle.

Corbino, born in Sicily 37 years ago, was brought to the U.S. as a child of eight, reared in Manhattan's lower East Side. What...