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Land and Water

Houses and squares, the foundation for social interaction, evoking an atmosphere that is intimate and yet at the same time open to dialogue and contact with the outside world: these form the conceptual essence of a large number works set in various Italian towns and cities, including Venice, Burano, Trento, Padua, Verona, Feltre, Milan, Riva del Garda, Bologna, Gubbio, Florence, Siena, Lucca, Pitigliano, Sorano, Loreto, Mantua, Vigevano and Parma. The first part of this catalogue represents the final stage of a research project dating back to 1999 into historic urban centres, resulting in the sequences of paintings entitled "Dancing Houses", "Sky of Roofs" and "The Square". The aim of the research was to discover the soul of each town or city through close study of the houses, façades, doors and windows looking out onto its medieval heart. These buildings, impregnated with human moods, have preserved within the very fabric of their materials the stories and actions of the people who once lived there. They hark back to our roots, to an extremely fragile world that is in constant danger of disappearing. The use of the adjective "dancing" in the series "Dancing Houses" has not only joyful connotations, but can also refer to the macabre, as in the fascinating gothic frescoes in which Death appears in the midst of the festivities of knights and ladies, a reminder of the precarious nature of human existence. But these are above all houses "on the move", houses which long to fly, to dance their stories; houses that cling to the rock face and to time, like the tesserae of a refined mosaic. [ read more ]