The magic fascination of the seascape of
GILBERTO PICCININI

"The sea is shrouded in mystery" - Joseph Conrad (From "Heart of darkness")

Some years ago, Walter Benjamin foretold the crisis of the figurative and landscape painting due to the triumph of art photography. Today we can say that his forecast has not become true; in fact after multifold experiments of deformation or refusal of the real, a revaluation of the figurative representation is gradually reappearing. This is happening because today's most intense and genuine artists, like Gilberto Piccinini, have acquired the awareness of the evocative power. They recreate their own subjective symbolic, vibrant reality, which they represent also thanks to the meaningful contribution of the modern and contemporary painting, often unconsciously made their own.

Piccinini lives in Milan but he has always had in his soul and heart the magic, ancestral call of the sea. And the sea is the only protagonist of his paintings; one can immediately feel the secret, mysterious intrinsic charm, its salty smell, its powerful voice, Jorge Luis Borges wrote: ''The sea is an ancient idiom I can't decipher'', when quoting Eugenio Montale, ''among the rocks the little waves whisper'' until one ''gets drunk with the voice/coming from your mouths, when they open''. This is the evocation power of an intimately felt representation.

Few painters can, like Piccinini, give a voice and a soul to the sea; few can magically depict its eternal flow on the canvas, its strength, its vitality, its poetry, its hidden melodies, its romantic charm, almost like it were a breathing creature.

All this is painted with Piccinini's unmistakeable ''symphony in blue'' woven with various shades of colours, from the lightest to the darkest. The nocturne in the moonlight evoke mysterious melodies, with their amazing representation of impetuous, winding waves, which break; or which run after each other and crash in their eternal flow which is a symbol of life and movement. It is a light and dark dance, with the crests lit by a tender, vibrant, metaphysical light and the obscure, mysterious whirlpools, which alternate light and shade; it is a symbolic projection of spiritual longings and unfathomable darkness of the unconscious. The result is a work that is a dream and heart desire, intimate journal and visual representation of the artist's own need either for tenderness and romanticism, cradled by a sweet, chopinian ''nocturne''; or for an intense abandoning to overwhelming passions inspired by a strong wish for freedom in accordance with Charles Baudelaire ''Free man, the sea will always be dear to your heart''.

Manrico Testi