Fulvio Testa: Watercolors

Description

Small in scale, Testa’s untitled watercolors date from 1983 to 1989, and are a series of nature studies that depict … well, what or where you can’t be quite sure. Some of his scenes look as if they could have come from the American Southwest, with its scruffy vegetation, low mountains and the colorful, monotonous splendor of its desert. Others could be Italian ruins, overgrown amid a lush forest and lit with the dim light of sunset. Actually, this collection of 20 watercolors and eight sketchbooks is, in fact, a record of the fictitious places that existed only in the artist’s imagination. This is a document of Testa’s landscape of the mind, a landscape not real, yet more than real in that these works are a summation of everything that the artist knows of landscape. Minutely detailed, Testa’s paintings are illuminated with an odd, expressionist lighting, much like the mysterious landscapes found hidden in Renaissance works or in the more recent paintings of the Surrealists. This is pure landscape, as a form of its own and for its own sake. Based on reality, it is not a mirror image of landscape but rather a creative expression of it. There is an overtly Romantic feel to these works and Testa makes full use of a rather dark, earthy palette to bring to life imaginary scenes that reflect not only a fantastic imagination but a comprehensive knowledge of more than 400 years of painting. Testa’s dramatic flair comes through with vibrant colors and a quick, light-handed brushstroke that results in nearly otherworldly paintings. You are drawn into the lush vegetation and deep blue shadows of an ancient ruin and silently wish you could walk through a landscape this beautiful.
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