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The restless still lifes by Francesco Arata on display in Crema

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Painter of the splendid restlessly faded still lifes, Crema finds Francesco Arata in a refined exhibition at Palazzo Zurla De Poli. The native artist of Castelleone (1890-1956), with a characterizing trait in softening lights and colors in a restless balance of shapes, nourishes his still lifes by dosing, and wisely fading with a delicate touch, the substratum that most had for the genre in Lombardy. His is a meditated and cultured painting of dense citations and echoes metabolized and revisited according to a very personal syntax that reinterprets and internalizes everything, while Lorenzo Lotto, Vincenzo Campi, Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Caravaggio are cornerstones from which the Lombard painter does not want and can ignore. .

Roses wither

In his paintings the roses wither, the leaves of the vine wither, the mallards recline their heads fixed with death, the cloths get stained and dirty, the herrings color the wrapping of paper with rotting stench, while the self-portrait, with brushes hand, is frowning with unsettled uneasiness. And this is how the object represented in Arata’s brushstrokes is characterized by an intimate subjectivity, where the precarious equilibrium of grapes, bottles or composition, evoke disturbing swirls, ill-concealed worries, apprehensions. Yet the pictorial grammar appears at first quiet and sheltered, “a manifestation of the mood, which tells the pleasure of life sheltered from the passing of the seasons”, until an inevitable memento mori peeps out and stains the fruit, the apples deteriorate, pears blacken, cabbage discolours, grapes are broken down into distorted stalks.

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allegory

A painting that of Arata which becomes allegorical therefore, which alludes and symbolizes, in light and not only, and which displaces in a composure that breaks down into variations that are sometimes barely perceptible, sometimes unsettling and therefore alienating.

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“Arata controls still life in all its variations, verifying with deep sensitivity every mutation and pulsation, revisiting subjects such as game, fruits, tablecloths, bowls, jugs; transforms the composition in every period of his work, at first deliberately realistic, then, with the advance of the Thirties, more inspired by sensations related to the changing situations, moods, artistic climate, new research , of the advancing age that leads him to prudent solutions ”, explain the curators of this exhibition that dialogues plastically with the frescoes of Palazzo Zurla De Poli.

The works on display are 19 canvases (owned by the Arata Foundation, loans from other private collections and 5 paintings by the De Poli family).

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