Emotive Landscapes: Nature as a Mirror of the Human Soul
In the vast realm of art, the landscape is never merely a collection of trees, hills, or open skies. It is a refuge, an enigma, a silent companion that welcomes and reflects the depths of the human spirit. When an artist gazes upon a lush expanse or an endless sea, they do not see only a physical horizon; they perceive the interlacing of their own emotions, the echo of memories, a visual allegory of the most intimate inner nuances. Through this dialogue with nature, painters, sculptors, and installation artists create emotive landscapes—visions that interpret a state of mind rather than simply describe a place. The Romantic Nature of Friedrich: Silences and Infinity Caspar David Friedrich, a master of Romanticism, gifted us landscapes that are far more than mere views. In works such as Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, the misty horizon that embraces a solitary figure becomes a reflection of a spirit in search of answers. Here, nature is a projection of an inner infinity—a canvas upon which the artist paints his own melancholy and wonder. Through that mysterious horizon, Friedrich invites us to contemplate spirituality and the vulnerability of humanity in the face of life’s vastness. The horizon transforms into a kind of spiritual precipice, reminding us that to gaze at the landscape is to confront ourselves—a sometimes daunting act of courage. Caspar_David_Friedrich_-_Wanderer Above The Sea Fog The Whirlwind of Emotions of Van Gogh When discussing emotive landscapes, one cannot help but think of Vincent van Gogh, whose work is a whirlwind of emotions. In his cypresses, starry skies, and wheat fields, there pulses an energy—a resonant echo of his fragility and emotional intensity. In Starry Night, the sky seems alive, almost bubbling beneath the vigorous brushstrokes. Here, nature is not merely depicted; it mirrors the inner turmoil of the artist—a celebration and despair intertwined in a dance of color and form. Van_Gogh, Starry Night Monet and the Impression of the Moment With Claude Monet, the landscape takes on an almost meditative quality. The founder of Impressionism uses nature not to capture its material essence but to seize the fleeting impression of a moment. In his series of Water Lilies and Rouen Cathedral, every shift in light becomes a testament to the transience and beauty of existence. Monet paints impermanence—a moment that transforms before our eyes and invites us to reflect on the nature of time and the mystery of the instant. Claude_Monet, Water Lilies 1917-1919 Edvard Munch: Between Pain and Alienation Edvard Munch elevates the landscape to an unprecedented level of psychological engagement. His distorted lines and vivid colors evoke a nature steeped in pain and anguish. In works such as The Scream, nature ceases to be a mere backdrop and instead merges with the urgency and despair of the central figure, intensifying the feeling of existential isolation. Munch demonstrates how the landscape can embody an emotional experience, becoming an extension of the human condition. Edvard_Munch, The Scream , 1893_National_Gallery_of_Norway The Abstract and Melancholic Landscapes of Gerhard Richter In contemporary art, Gerhard Richter offers landscapes that appear blurred, suspended between dream and memory. Looking at his canvases, one senses that nature resembles a memory slowly fading away—a subtle sadness, a feeling of something slipping through our fingers, much like a faded photograph. Richter’s landscapes seem to exist midway between dream and reality, ethereal projections that evoke lost places and bygone times—a kind of non-place where reality fragments and the boundary between memory and the present dissolves. Gerhard Richter Anselm Kiefer: Destruction and Rebirth in Collective Memory Anselm Kiefer employs raw materials and devastated landscapes to reflect the drama of history. In works such as Morgenthau Plan, he stages a wounded nature—a landscape that speaks of memory and trauma, laden with symbols of war and renewal. In Kiefer’s vision, the landscape becomes an open wound that, like a scar, stands as a testament to shared suffering and a history from which we may learn. Olafur Eliasson and the Sensory Immersion Olafur Eliasson moves beyond traditional painting to bring the landscape into the realm of direct experience. With installations such as The Weather Project at London’s Tate Modern, the Danish–Icelandic artist employs light, water, and mist to create immersive environments. Eliasson manipulates natural elements to evoke an emotional and sensory response, urging the viewer to explore their relationship with nature through bodily and sensory experiences. It is a nature that breathes and pulses, inviting us to ponder what it truly means to “be” in a place. Maya Lin: Landscapes as Places of Memory Maya Lin’s approach to the landscape is both intimate and reflective. In the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the landscape becomes a space for contemplation and remembrance. With her installation Wavefield, Lin transforms the ground into gentle undulations that invite meditation. Her landscapes are not merely physical—they are psychological and emotional realms designed to envelop the visitor in a sense of calm and profound connection. The Landscapes of the Soul by Alessandro Casale Alessandro Casale stands among those artists who skillfully capture the hidden depths of nature, transforming the landscape into a tangible representation of the human soul.“A ‘landscape of the soul’ that endures the poetic distortions of memory, drawing nourishment from its inner lines while shedding conventional visual references; expanses that serve as extensions of vast, remote lands open to total interiorization—not only for the artist but also for the most sensitive observer.With his canvases, Casale renews the pages of an intimate diary, where color and sentiment become the strokes of an intense poetic script—pages filled with deafening silences that nevertheless resonate in the interplay of chromatic musicality.”(2010, Marco Palamidessi)His art transforms the landscape into a silent dialogue, where nature is not just a backdrop but a central actor that accompanies us on a journey deep within our soul. Nature as a Reflection of Humanity The emotive landscape is not merely a visual representation of nature; it is a metaphor that transforms the external world into a reflection of our dreams, fears, and desires. From Friedrich
The Angel: Illusion or Revelation?
There is something that both attracts and profoundly unsettles us in these winged figures. Where the human meets the sacred, the angel appears, suspended in an undefined dimension between heaven and earth. A multifaceted and mysterious figure, the angel embodies meanings that oscillate between the sacred and the profane, between devotion and rebellion. But why does art—from medieval painting to street art—continue to depict it? The answer might lie in the fact that an angel is never merely an angel; rather, it serves as a mirror through which we observe our deepest desires, our fears, and our perennial need to make sense of the world.Undoubtedly, the angel remains a subject that continues to wield a timeless evocative power—a complex metaphor open to multiple interpretations. The Symbol of Faith and Protection In early Christian and medieval art, angels appear as divine messengers, their human form enriched with wings to suggest their transcendent nature. Although the Holy Scriptures do not explicitly describe them with this attribute, medieval artists added wings to emphasize their ability to cross the boundary between heaven and earth. They appeared in key representations, such as the Annunciation, symbolizing divine intervention in history and their role as intermediaries between God and humanity.In an era marked by uncertainty and the fear of sin, angels represented security and order. Depicted with hieratic expressions and golden wings, they embodied faith as a guarantee and a comfort, reassuring people through their solemn, austere, and distant image. Renaissance: The Beauty of Human Spirituality With the Renaissance, the human body was rediscovered and celebrated even in sacred art, transforming the angelic figure into a symbol of beauty and grace. Angels with harmonious forms and serene gazes, the work of artists such as Botticelli, Raphael, and Michelangelo, represented an aesthetic ideal that was both close to the divine and accessible to the human observer. In this period, “putti”—small, chubby angels—make their appearance, infusing sacred scenes with a sense of lightness and embodying a notion of faith that is closer, sweeter, and more familiar. The angel becomes a guide, inviting one to a more intimate spiritual experience without the reverential distance typical of the Middle Ages. Baroque: The Angel between Drama and Passion During the Baroque period, angels assume a dramatic and passionate presence. Artists such as Caravaggio, Bernini, and Rubens depict them immersed in dynamic compositions, emphasizing intense emotions and theatrical gestures. The angelic figures become symbols of justice and sacrifice, often portrayed in heroic and combative poses that bring them closer to the image of a warrior.Baroque art explores the passionate side of faith: angels are portrayed as creatures that suffer, protect, and fight, reflecting a humanity in which spirituality intertwines with sacrifice and moral challenge. In this period, the angel is not merely a messenger of peace but becomes a representation of the inner struggle between good and evil. Romanticism and Symbolism: The Angel of the Soul In Romanticism, the angel transforms into an introspective figure—a symbol of the restless soul and of profound existential questions. Artists such as William Blake and Caspar David Friedrich depict melancholic angels, reflecting a desire for transcendence and a personal spiritual quest, thus making the angel a symbol of human emotions, an embodiment of individual aspirations and inquietudes.With Symbolism, the angelic figure becomes even more enigmatic, embodying the mystery of life and death. Artists such as Odilon Redon and Gustav Moreau portray angels that express the allure of the unconscious, dreamlike figures that seem to emerge from parallel worlds, symbols of the infinite and the unknown. These angels do not reassure but rather confront the observer, eliciting metaphysical questions about human nature and destiny. Contemporary Art: Fragile and Conceptual Angels In contemporary art, the angelic figure further fragments, assuming new and unexpected forms. Artists such as Marc Chagall depict melancholic angels, suspended between heaven and earth, as symbols of a humanity seeking light even as it remains immersed in its own fragility.Other artists, such as Kiki Smith and Anselm Kiefer, explore the idea of decaying and wounded angels—creatures set in degraded urban contexts and immersed in atmospheres of disillusionment. For instance, Kiefer’s angels reflect a shattered spirituality, symbolizing human vulnerability in a complex and fragmented reality, expressing the precariousness and sense of disorientation typical of contemporary society. In this contemporary scenario, Alessandro Casale emerges, blending the earthly dimension with a suspended and rarefied spirituality. Ethereal and almost dreamlike, his angels are beings that transcend matter and manifest in color, becoming “radiant epiphanies”—images that fade and merge with his atmospheric settings as if they were emanations of a cosmic breath.Casale’s angels become metaphors for an essential quest, symbolic images immersed in profound silence, evoking a “religious spirituality” that seems to emerge from a world beyond the visible. Even today, the angel speaks of an inner dimension, inviting us to look beyond the surface, and ultimately reminding us of our eternal aspiration toward something greater than ourselves. Essential BibliographyErnst H. Gombrich, The Story of Art, Phaidon, 2008Andrew Graham Dixon, Art: The Definitive Visual Guide, DK, 2023Émile Mâle, Religious Art at the End of the Middle Ages in France, Studium, 2024Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy (1600–1750), Einaudi, 1995 Online Sourceshttps://www.uffizi.it/mostre-virtuali/nella-luce-degli-angeli#1https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angeli_nell%27arte#:~:text=Nel%20tardo%20Medioevo%2C%20gli%20angeli,Annunciazione%20di%20Jan%20van%20Eyck.Fig. 1: https://alleanzacattolica.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Figura-6.jpgFig. 2: https://www.uffizi.it/opere/botticelli-madonna-del-magnificat#galleryFig. 3: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estasi_di_santa_Teresa_d%27Avila#/media/File:Ecstasy_of_St._Teresa_HDR.jpgFig. 4: https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blake_jacobsladder.jpgFig. 5: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27angelo_caduto_(Cabanel)#/media/File:Alexandre_Cabanel_-_Fallen_Angel.jpgFig. 6: https://www.ilgiornaledellarte.com/Articolo/Per-Kiefer-gli-angeli-caduti-siamo-noi
Judges, Lawyers, and Internal Trials
Justice and injustice do not escape art; indeed, justice in art appears not only as a symbol of abstract morality but also weaves itself into human truths, ethical dilemmas, and the powers that define it. Throughout the centuries, art has offered a mutable perspective on justice—from law as social harmony, solemnly represented in ancient and medieval works, to a justice imbued with sterner, more institutional attributes through symbols such as the scales, the sword, and finally the blindfold.This iconography, unchanged until the eighteenth century, eventually ceased to be celebrated and at times even took on a satirical hue, voicing a popular, critical “common sense” toward a legal power seen as distant and often corrupt. Honoré Daumier explored this social critique by depicting lawyers and judges in caricatured attitudes to show the distance between the judicial system and the people, alluding to a cynical, money-oriented judicial power. His drawings—collected in Le Gens de Justice and published in Le Charivari—illustrate the dynamics between lawyers and judges with irony and realism. Later, this satirical vein spread to Germany and the United Kingdom, where the magazine Punch continued the critique of the judicial system and, similarly, William Hogarth examined British legal corruption, as in his series of engravings The Trial. https://www.eamesfineart.com/artworks/11692-william-hogarth-bambridge-on-trial-for-murder-by-a-committee-1803/ Alessandro Casale’s attention to the forensic world represents a rare and original contribution within contemporary art. While artists have often addressed political, social, and religious themes, few have chosen the legal environment as their primary subject. This makes Casale’s vision particularly interesting, as he explores the concept of justice not through abstract symbols or idealized figures, but by drawing the observer into a courtroom—a space that is both solemn and rife with contradictions. Trained as a lawyer, Casale understands the weight and complexity of that world, and in his paintings he portrays it as a theater suspended between authority and fragility, where judges and lawyers confront the tension of the accused. He emphasizes a separation between the judges, positioned high like almost sacerdotal figures, and the anonymous, indistinct crowd of participants populating the lower part of the canvas; in doing so, he reinforces the sense of detachment and inaccessibility with respect to judicial power.Casale’s scenes vibrate in a motionless time, as if suspended in limbo. Everything seems to await a verdict that never quite arrives, and the viewer is drawn into an atmosphere of suspension and doubt—a process that never truly approaches the truth. Faces lack precise details; people are reduced to archetypal figures. They appear as inscrutable masks, with vacant eyes gazing elsewhere or fixed on the viewer with a look that perhaps awaits a second judgment, another chance, making the observer feel judged in turn. The bodies seem almost to merge into one another, like a human magma in which individuality dissolves in favor of an amorphous collective. In past allegories of Justice—such as those by Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel or by Raphael in the Vatican Rooms—justice was represented as a divine, elevated virtue, often embodied by idealized, angelic figures. Raphael, in The Disputation of the Sacrament and The School of Athens, constructed compositions that expressed the order and coherence of an absolute system of values in which justice was part of an orderly, rational body of knowledge. https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giustizia_(Giotto)#/media/File:Giotto_di_Bondone_-_No._43_The_Seven_Virtues_-_Justice_-_WGA09270.jpg In some of Casale’s paintings, the courtrooms resemble temples—though profane ones—places with a sacred aura yet devoid of redemption. We do not find heroic figures or judges portrayed as martyrs of justice; rather, the artist shows men and women participating in a ritual permeated by doubt, relativity, and an unsettling questioning of the very meaning of judgment. His approach is more existential and philosophical than caricatural, although at times rather grotesque aspects are exposed. He imbues his works with a subtle irony mixed with an unease that raises more questions than it answers. Casale is not interested in judging his subjects; he observes them, inviting us to examine the cracks and ambiguities of the system. The figure of the lawyer, in particular, is depicted as the bearer of an unstable truth—always open to reinterpretation and, at times, to deception. Central in this cycle of works is not so much the individual case—the hearing, the trial—as it is, once again, the inner landscape, that “other” temporal dimension characteristic of the artist’s poetic vision, which in this case suspends us in yearning, anticipation, doubt, and an emotional vortex—a kind of internal trial. In this context, Casale seems to inherit the visionary, dark approach of Francisco Goya, who with his Caprichos delved into the shadows and contradictions of the human soul. https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_capricci#/media/File:Museo_del_Prado_-_Goya_-_Caprichos_-_No._23_-_Aquellos_polbos.jpg However, while Goya employed caricature to expose irrationality, Casale prefers a rarefied atmosphere in which the viewer is drawn into a suspended dimension, devoid of answers and steeped in a moral void.Alessandro Casale thus invites us to reflect on the concept of justice as a complex representation of power, where the true verdict always seems elusive and judgment remains suspended. He offers no answers but instead poses uncomfortable questions and disenchanted reflections: Is it truly possible to judge? Websites: https://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/arts/peinture/william-hogarth-the-rake-s-progress
Beyond the Visible: Dream and the Unconscious in Art
Nothing fascinates more than that which exists solely as a possibility, that which one cannot assert with certainty exists. Dream and mystery intertwine in art—as in our imagination—hovering between the visible and the invisible to offer new levels of interpretation. At the beginning of the century, Marc Chagall plunged into a personal, fantastical world, giving form to inner visions in which intense colors and floating figures reveal a poetic and nostalgic dimension. His flying animals, houses suspended in the sky, and distorted characters serve as symbols of an inner universe—a realm of emotions in which reality and imagination merge into a visually charged narrative. Chagall creates an “oneiric world” where every element is imbued with meaning, a microcosm inviting the observer to explore an intimate, spiritual reality. The advent of psychoanalysis by Freud and Jung breathed new life into this quest. For Freud, dreams are “the royal road to the unconscious,” a notion that would inspire André Breton in founding Surrealism. In 1928, in his manifesto Le Surréalisme et la Peinture, Breton defined surrealist art as a means to access an irrational world, proposing the dream as a superior reality free from logical constraints. Thus, Surrealism drew on psychological theories and ventured into the profound dimensions of being. Salvador Dalí stands among the revolution’s key figures: his works, such as The Persistence of Memory, are populated by symbols that, defying the laws of physics and time, reveal the abysses of the subconscious. Through meticulous, hyperrealistic imagery, Dalí introduces elements like eggs, ants, and soft, malleable figures—symbols of repressed anxieties and desires. His painting, an almost obsessive analysis of the unconscious, sees the dream as a portal to both the collective and personal realms of the psyche. Beside him, René Magritte adopts a different approach, presenting a “rationalized” unconscious that destabilizes reality with cold, analytical logic. In his paintings, the apparent normality of objects is subverted to evoke mystery and absurdity—a method of questioning the very nature of reality. Magritte stated, “The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, for the meaning of the mind itself is unknown,” suggesting that dreams allow access to deeper levels of the psyche. In works such as The Human Condition, Magritte plays with the concepts of perception and representation: an easel depicts a landscape that merges with the actual scenery, highlighting the subtle boundary between what we see and what we believe we see. The painting Ceci n’est pas une pipe (this is not a pipe) challenges the viewer to reflect on the difference between reality and its depiction, suggesting that the world of dreams and representations is as real as ordinary perception. Rather than portraying chaotic or intensely emotional dreamscapes like those of Dalí, Magritte prefers to evoke the dream with a cool, analytical logic—rendering the familiar as strange and the absurd as possible. His subjects—skies inside closed rooms, faceless men, flying fish—offer delicate, suggestive access to the unconscious, evoking a realm that is both mysterious and deeply unsettling. Magritte reveals the dream as a plane parallel to everyday reality, a space in which every image can assume multiple, profound meanings, overturning our understanding of the visible world and inviting reflection on the limits of perception: “Reality is never as it seems; truth is above all imagination.” In Joan Miró, the dream transforms into a symbolic, fairy-tale language populated by geometric figures rendered in bright colors and elemental forms. Other surrealists, such as Paul Delvaux and Yves Tanguy, explored the territory of the unconscious with equally visionary poetics, striving for representations that, as Breton theorized, lie “beyond any conscious control.” In this psychic automatism, art becomes a vehicle for expressing deep thoughts and impulses, liberated from the constraints of reason. In the postwar period, American Abstract Expressionism resumed the surrealist legacy, shifting the focus to the artistic gesture as a means of expressing the unconscious. Jackson Pollock, with his signature dripping technique, transformed the canvas into a mirror of the soul—a place where the chaos of his psyche materialized in abstract, fragmented compositions. In his famous declaration “Painting is a discovery of the self,” Pollock encapsulated his vision of art as an inner journey, a creative trance, almost shamanic, that unveils the hidden impulses and “demons” of the unconscious. Pollock’s works, such as Number 27 (1950), embody this approach with a chaos devoid of a central form or predefined structure, where gesture and color merge in a ritualistic dance upon the canvas, transforming the painting into an extension of his psyche. As Palma Bucarelli wrote, Pollock’s art becomes “the image of that gesture and its emotional power,” a visual manifestation of inner movements, chaos, and the primordial energy that dwells within humanity. In contrast, in Casale’s works—such as Rovi—the presence of the unconscious is more subtle, mediated by a naturalistic sensitivity. While Pollock uproots every form to surrender entirely to impulse, here forms emerge and dissolve with delicate grace, suggesting a more harmonious relationship with nature and the inner self. Casale’s technique might seem less radical, yet it is driven by a similar intent: not to represent objects, but rather to convey processes, emotions, and states of mind. The intertwining brushstrokes and patches of color convey a sense of immersion, as if inviting the viewer to lose themselves in a mental landscape. Casale accesses the unconscious in a less obsessive, almost contemplative manner: his paintings invite silent reflection, an inner dialogue in a state of quasi-religious introspection, and a journey that is exploratory rather than frantic—as if he sought to reestablish a primordial connection with the environment. Sinuous lines and organic forms evoke flora and the cycles of nature, creating an inner garden where the self manifests in a subtle, peaceful way, conveying continuity. In works such as Migrazioni (2010), Casale embraces the suggestions of Miró and Klee, evoking a suspended, timeless dimension in which organic forms and intense colors hint at a plurality of inner worlds. In doing so, he reconnects with the symbolic language of the unconscious,
Painting for Painting, by Dino Pasquali
A plethora of repertoire—or rather, an inflated sample (one can only bemoan the dilemma of choosing one nomenclature of distinction over another due to an excess)—characterizes the field of landscape painting, where nineteenth‑century quotations of the umpteenth kind continue to claim the lion’s share, still “inspiring” many illustrators, especially those motivated by hobby and/or by the desire to make a quick buck (perhaps, one might understand, out of a genuine need for income). A distinctly personal voice, with its own “paraphrases” of the natural environment (often represented by the solitary, silent countryside of Irpinia, or, more generally, by a South that is anything but embarrassed), appears to us as the chosen voice of our Luccan artist—so much so that an inscription by Gastone Breddo encapsulates the judgment as perfectly as could be: “… His paintings appeared to me as a gentle bath of light in which is inscribed a stenography of the soul.” Born in the Avellino area, in Taurasi about fifty years ago, Casale has been painting for fifteen years and has long since managed to liberate himself—from at least a partial reliance—on certain visual clichés (noble, it must be said) that in the land of Lucca and its environs are hardly ever at risk of falling into disfavor. The paintings that Alessandro now presents to our attention—rightly hoping for the public’s interest, which ultimately matters most—deceive the eye, not in the sense—absolutely not—of a photographic adherence to the truth, because from a distance they appear as evidence of a pronounced naturalistic abstraction which, in terms of color, seems to have taken a lesson in chiaroscuro; yet, upon closer inspection, one can discern—with a touch of surprise (at least that is what we experienced)—allusions that are not so feeble in their objectivity, in that within the altered glow of a marked and diffused sunlight they offer vivid chromatic cues of “patches,” of aggregates of color. And so, just as before the painter, while altering and rendering it “unnatural” (or bestowing upon it “the naturalness of the poet”), has come into harmony with “motives”—indeed, the motive—the observer is likewise able to experience that desired sympathetic vibration toward canvases traversed by kaleidoscopic combinations (which are by no means to be mistaken for a sort of… chaotic aesthetic). Beyond the effect of “defamiliarization,” which indeed constitutes the peculiar core of imaginative languages, this painting for painting’s sake possesses all the hallmarks of sincerity—like any work that, irrespective of technical mastery, centers on a non-histrionic lyricism, an immediate expression of a sentiment far removed from the usual arcadia constructed on a drawing board, from those belated pastoral idylls (once upon a time already targeted by the sarcastic darts of the fierce Scannabue—an artistic pseudonym, preceded by Aristarco—of that controversial Baretti who pronounced: “unmanly little sonnets, tiny little children, feebly effeminate, all full of little loves”). It goes without saying that there is also the mental underpinning of meditation and ratiocination. After all, every “messenger,” especially of the artistic kind, is often driven—if not induced—by the longing to be different, by the urgency to seek an original word, his own “cipher,” in short, his personal style. But here, in Casale’s work, reason does not come to the detriment of the heart’s inclinations. Moreover, as we have noted in other terms, the representational artist does not challenge that historic institution of communication which is brush painting, nor does he shy away from an (if somewhat externally determined) love for nature as the fundamental source of suggestions—a leitmotif, or, if you prefer, a free theme upon which every possible variation and modification can be enacted, determined both by the perceptive culture of an eye that has certainly not shut itself off from aniconism (or rather, from non‑figuration) and by taste and creativity. Florence, October 1983DINO PASQUALI
Alessandro Casale as Recounted by Nicola Micieli
For Alessandro Casale, painting was a happy—and I believe, unexpected—landing, since he embarked on its practice at an age when the coordinates of one’s interests and vocations are already decidedly fixed, especially for someone who has consolidated a significant professional commitment—in his specific case, in the legal field—that is neither negligible nor always easily reconciled with the activity of painting. This is not to be understood as a mere pleasant pastime pursued with little or no ambition for research or worldly exploration—a simple leisure diversion conducted, perhaps, with the taste and sensitivity that are generally—though not invariably—found in well-cultured individuals. This, however, is not the case with Casale. Rather, at the age of 35 he did “discover” painting as a vehicle—ideally sought long before—for the expression of certain intimate, expressive needs, for moods and emotions that demanded to be concretized into a poetic event. He then nurtured this unsuspected vocation with such continuity and diligent work that in a very short time he acquired not only a craft worthy of respect, but also the fundamental elements of a language that alone allow one to develop a true style. One need only note that in very few years—from his early days (around ’68) to roughly ’73–’74—he established the technical–formal and genre fundamentals of his painting, later refining and increasingly aligning them to a lyrical purpose, having essentially identified them already after his first, rather scholastic attempts, carried out within the framework of a traditional Tuscan vedutism. In rapid succession, these early experiments were followed by experiences alternately characterized by a material emphasis with an expressionistic inclination (as in Nell’attesa, 1968) or by a tonal synthesism that sought to transcend the mere naturalistic–descriptive assumption through a clean application of paint (as in Albeggiare, 1969). Finally, with Balcone fiorito (’72), Sentiero di campagna (’73) and numerous other paintings of similar design—once the unity of the naturalistic vision had been fractured—Casale discovered the autonomous qualities of the pictorial fabric and of the color that nourishes and animates it with decorative suggestions, attributed both to the sumptuous quality of matter imbued with chromatic moods and to the phrasing of the à‑plat. It is unnecessary to dwell further on the rapid enrichment of his previous figurative experience (practiced on the well-worn texts of the post–Macchiaioli Tuscan tradition) with a renewed visual culture—linguistically speaking, drawing on compelling sources from expressionism, symbolism, tachism, abstract–concreteness, informality and, to a certain extent, even the exquisitely Luccan—as in recent decades a local approach has emerged in conceiving landscape as an almost fantastical vision of territories cluttered with objects, which serve as pretexts for incisive pictorial notations and inventions of a refined narrative taste. For our artist, then, it was a matter of suddenly opening himself to a painting of imaginative elaboration rather than a mere figurative transposition of the naturalistic given—a naturalistic datum he has never completely abandoned, the visual record still serving as a mnemonic device that coordinates the free chromatic signs and brings them into substantial congruence with the phenomenal world to which man is intimately and vitally bound. The pictorial variations in this important formative period were numerous. Predominant are those compositions built from chromatic fragments with well-defined tonal values, with streaks that shatter the perspective framework into puzzle-like structures—in which the more fluid and articulated the compositional syntax appears, the freer and more imaginative the allusions to a central, inspiring reality become, even though it is not yet fully problematized, so to speak, as a lyrical–existential projecting space, as it will later evolve. Verso la completa distruzione (’73) is the transitional painting that astonishes with stylistically and poetically novel intentions. The “ecological” allusion is expressed through the evident depiction of fish in decay on a beach strewn with biological debris and inorganic waste. Yet in this explicit acknowledgment of breakdown and culpable environmental alteration lies a thematic limitation of the work—its dating to an era of alarmingly belated denunciations in Italy compared to Carson’s bestseller Silent Spring (1962). It is here important to underline the linguistic acquisition of the “color-sign”—that is, a highly dynamic formal element which, from now on, will characterize and emotionally qualify the image by animating every part with varying intensities of chromatic accentuation and material consistency, almost as if yielding to the motions of the soul triggered by the emergence of a clump of undergrowth or a stone from the sandy expanses, or by a flower of dazzling beauty amidst a profusion of light that whitens and confuses the forms. Yet in Verso la completa distruzione the structure remains concrete—in other words, organized along decisive compositional lines: matter forms its solid, humoral component, so that one can speak of a “landscape of the soul,” even though the accumulation of stones, fish, and objects—displayed with abundant demonstrative force and a hint of recrimination—is then subjected to a process of pictorial disintegration that transforms things into patches, coagulations, and tears, effectively camouflaging them within the environment. In this admirable painting it becomes clear that the intention is to imbue the landscape with a series of meanings and allusions—a subtle reference to an “other” psychological landscape, to the map of the soul which nature mirrors as its double. It follows naturally that the artist produces an image ideally recorded, in its stylistic and poetic peculiarities, in response to the inner urgencies and the philosophy of life he has developed through his personal experience of the world and of man. It is appropriate here to emphasize the breadth of meaning that the term “landscape” assumes in Casale, who may have initially approached this genre by inertia—as many beginners do—but who quickly grasped the expressive possibilities of existential themes with a strong psychological impact, devoting himself to them almost exclusively. Not that the Luccan artist has neglected other conventional pictorial subjects—from the figure to still life, which are usually concomitant with vedute—and indeed, several examples of fine craftsmanship and convincing aesthetic outcome are documented. In the overall body of his work, however, thematic excursions remain marginal. This
Painting as the Reinvention of the Real
No man ever dedicates himself to art without harboring more or less valid motivations. Sometimes, he is driven by the simple love of divertissement; at other times, by the need to confront his own memories; still, by the desire to give concrete expressive space to his reflections; and finally, by the urgency to insert himself—with personal inquiries and messages—into the great mystery of the structures and relationships among beings and things, adding his voice to the chorus of lamentations, questions, or rationalizations concerning the destinies of man and the world. It is crucial to break away from the common, everyday language and to opt for the “high” language of images, also to offer different resonances to our unceasing inner dialogue with ourselves and with others. One cannot fail to notice this constant existential tussle with the things that surround us, with the limits imposed upon us and by nature, with our soul-wrenching temporal and ideal obstacles. The “negative” lurks every day; each moment is both a loss and a gain with respect to how we situate ourselves in time and whether we manage to construct our hopeful responses. To proclaim aloud our consent and dissent—with an image, a color, a form, a sound—is an active experience of participation in existence, a cry, a prayer, or even an imprecation directed toward a state of affairs in which, willingly or not, we have found ourselves on this earth. Something of all this must have happened to Alessandro Casale. The legalistic approach—by its very nature—responds with a cold, rational dialectic, nailing everything to the appearance of right and wrong, demanding dissertations on the possible, and tending toward the aridity of formal truth. For Casale, it was evidently not enough to structure his day according to the rhythm of incidental roles, memories, and judgments. Perhaps the leap into an ambiguous yet dramatically creative uncertainty arose precisely from this fundamental dissatisfaction, from the conscious realization that the aims of life, those unprecedented and vitalistic endeavors, the most significant destinies, were entirely different from the gears of an unfulfilling routine that was, in the end, extremely fragile and ephemeral. So, in such cases, the individual embarks on an illogical and risky path, fraught with errors and misunderstandings, all in order to escape an obligatory and unbearable situation. Behind him lay the culture and affection of a distant, lost land. His origins were withering from a lack of familiarity with personal experiences suffused with imagination: it was necessary to reclaim an identity more in tune with his hopes, his dreams, his deepest intimacies. The first expressive results were lacking—due to technical reasons and methods of self-analysis: the initial descriptivism was merely a convenient fallback, the first static figures the product of a failed attempt at a new dialogue with fellow human beings, and the naturalistic landscapes an emotional ingenuousness. But solitude and intelligence have, over the years, worked with gradual insistence: it became imperative to sharpen the themes and to emotionally enrich both the observation and the reinvention of the real. Even the emotions had to assert themselves urgently, as stark as the silence that dictated them and the reason that filtered them. Slowly, these sunlit and uninhabited landscapes were born (not necessarily as recollections), expansive in sky and land as adolescent memory once suggested, and suspended amid the anxieties that life, in its turn, so generously offered. In these canvases the primary figurative nucleus is represented by clumps of underbrush, brambles, and stones—and it is precisely around these humble elements that a seemingly monochrome space arises, almost as both commentary and consolation for those forms. Space itself nourishes, embraces, and scatters them here and there like milestones of a narrative that is existential rather than geographical, born in the silence of a personal history that now demanded different epilogues and new shores. Moreover, the deliberate insistence on a specific theme—which might appear limiting and could betray an anxiety for pictorial security—has already been surpassed by the current pursuit that strives to impart stylistic coherence even to other contents, to figures, flowers, houses, involving everything in a fleeting, transfiguring, and serene chromatic flash. The syntax, indeed, is elementary: the positioning of the sparse elements responds to the need to distribute patches on a canvas with the same meticulous care with which events are arranged in our arduous daily life—aside from the interplay of balances, tonal dosages, and rhythmic patterns that, like a musical score, create the soft and loud passages of the painting. And these patches tend to ignite and fade like signals of a sensitivity continuously grazed by the daily flow of life, a flow that motivates certain life choices, a certain taste for painting, the insistence on this or that hue. And what of color? It is a tool to make that which is not present in nature “exist”—a felicitous, lyrical dazzle, perhaps designed to retrieve, through the mind, the hidden elegy of things and transform it into form, line, and synthesis. Melancholy, too, must carve out its own physical, visible space, settling upon these desolate plains to which the painter, in vain, offers the vivid stippling of tiny colored masses and the joy of a marine light that seems to be the ultimate shudder of a hidden earthly faith. To me, these canvases testify to an ongoing discourse—one that preludes further developments and a greater variety of themes, yet is already imbued with authentic necessity and the proper expressive vigor. It is a matter of broadening the themes through which to transfer the urgencies of living and of self-expression, investing with the same passion—now turned from the landscape to martyrdom—so that emotion clings even more vividly to the meaning of reality. Through Casale’s work, we are witnessing a response—more fitting, albeit less practical and profitable—to the subtle despair of our everyday existence. DINO CARLESI
Alessandro Casale: Lyricism, Melancholy, Solitude
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 PoliTorino 5-08-2000