Alessandro Casale’s painting possesses all the characteristics that fail to appeal to those who hold a superficial and picturesque notion of landscape—one made up of facile suggestions and pleasant glimpses. And this, to begin with, is no small merit.
It means, in fact, that his aim is not to describe an external reality to which he might occasionally allude, but rather to convey, through his painted images, a realm of refined and profound spiritual sensitivity—a personal vision of the world that is immediately comprehensible yet rendered through a high degree of deliberate compositional synthesis.
Rightly, the critics who have examined his work have spoken of “landscapes of the soul,” of a “painting of imaginative elaboration rather than of figurative transfiguration of the given naturalistic data, to which however he has never completely renounced.”
This is how Nicola Micieli writes in the in-depth monograph on the artist from 1984, specifying that his best works “are those which, on the criterion of ambiguity, unveil the transient states from form to formlessness, from the timbral emergence of a color or a clump of matter to the diffused tonality of atmosphere, from the revealed and manifested image to that which is suggested and intuitively reassemblable by each according to the trace of a personal vision, being in such indeterminacy the pictorial analogue of the landscape of the soul to which the painter actually draws inspiration.”
I have included this long quotation because I agree with this critical interpretation. However, I believe it is important to delve deeper into the analysis of the very close relationship between content and form, to show how the latter—in its specific linguistic articulations—is perfectly suited to the former.
And when the content coincides with the sense of the form, one can speak of an authentic poetic vision in painting.
The most singular and interesting aspect of these landscapes, particularly those painted in recent years, is the tendency toward the annulment—or at least the reduction—of the three-dimensional spatial sense, determined by the elevation of the horizon line and by an intentional flattening of the terrain’s relief.
When it comes to mountains or hills, we see that the surface is treated with flat fields of color and tonal harmonies exhibiting very little contrast.
In “Snowy Summit” (1994), a subtle trace of white at the top elegantly indicates remoteness and, with evocative expressiveness, underscores the well-studied interplay of brown, ocher, green, and muted blue patches in the desolate landscape.
This painting undoubtedly carries strong symbolic connotations, also presenting itself as a metaphor for a condition of existential solitude—perhaps characterized by an aspiration toward unspoiled purity, always unattainable.
In the numerous landscapes—or rather seascapes—in which the expanses of sand become the protagonists, Casale almost makes the represented territory coincide with the two-dimensionality of the canvas’s surface. In doing so, he emphasizes the physical reality of painting: the thickness of its layers, the brushstrokes, the patches of color, and a particular, very subdued luminosity devoid of obvious naturalistic effects.
In this sense, “flatness” becomes a typical characteristic of Casale’s figurative space.
But it is by no means a passive or amorphous flatness; on the contrary, it can evolve into a scene teeming with varied elements.
In the case of “Free Beach” (1999), a large horizontal canvas becomes a solitary space filled with trace marks that are not precisely identifiable: dry shrubs, small dunes, and likely debris—plastic bags, paper scraps left by bathers or carried by the waves of a tempest. The thin blue-gray strip of the sea in the background reinforces the overall sense of desolation.
In “After the Tempest” (1998), a similar beach is instead imbued with “organic” signs: a swarm of crabs—living or dead, one cannot tell.
It is interesting to note, with regard to this painting and others such as “The Gathering” (1998), “Insects in Flight” (1999) or “In the Garden” (1998), how small organisms, lacking individual emphasis, transform into an articulated, diffuse fabric full of disordered tensions that imbues the painting’s very being with expressive life. In other words, one witnesses a fantastic metamorphosis of living beings into a labyrinthine tangle of micro-pictorial structures and vice versa.
It is no coincidence that Casale also painted a series of canvases entitled “Metamorphosis” during this period.
This attention to a process of radical transformation even leads to the invention of beings floating in the air: not only flying insects, but also—on a higher level of imaginative sublimation—the “Angels at Play” (1999). In a work like this, the painting assumes clear tones and weightless, darting, winged forms suspended on the surface of the canvas.
Another very evocative theme addressed by the painter in various compositions is that of groups of gypsies—a symbol of nomadic humanity—also portrayed on expanses of sand, in their solitary and melancholic existence, outside the space and time of our chaotic and neurotic society. These are images that provoke reflection on an impossible dream of freedom, on the drama of a population now abandoned to itself.
Francesco Poli
Torino 5-08-2000