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"The Sense of Life and the Nostalgia for Nature in the Art of Paolo Grigò" by Ilario Luperini

 

There are many twentieth century artists who first influenced Paolo Grigò’s work, those he has known personally, like Silvano Pulcinelli, Romano Masoni and Gipi, as well as some of the most famous names in Italian sculpture, including Manzù and Greco, and not forgetting the influence of the strong and ancient tradition of sculpture in Tuscany. Of course, since then the artist has followed his own path, had original experiences and has progressively forged a language of great communicative impact by means of those technical secrets with which his work has been enriched, all thanks to his rare ability to assimilate and re-elaborate. Thus, Grigò has reached high levels of expressive intensity, taking on an important role in the artistic panorama of our days.

A multiform personality who lives his times intensely, master of many techniques, Grigò tests his limits both with themes of great weight and of vital current importance, managing to avoid declamatory surges in favour of intellectual honesty, linguistic rigour and a consistency of ideas and actions.

His paintings are true and proper pulsating organisms, full of flickerings, iridescences, apparitions and explosions of energy, which lead down fascinating but disturbing paths through reality. It is a complex system created by the game played in a close relationship between colours and figures: colours which one moment seem to be acrid and provoking and the next moment softer and more persuasive. This system allows you to look right inside the core of man, to feel and love his suffering, to grasp the wonderful relation between the sense of life and the nostalgia for nature, with the hope of discovering worlds which are less neurotic and more austere. The ochres, oranges, yellows, greens and azures, treated with warm impasto,(take up much of the pictorial space inside which, thanks to his characteristic attention to composition, rhythmically conceived figures move. In his most recent works the figures break out of the depths with magnetic force, depths which are ever more macerated by the bodily form of the pictorial medium, often enriched with marks, handwriting, dollops of colour and the addition of other materials. A new tension pulsates on the canvas, one that has probably been determined by an awareness of limits, of the gigantic and perhaps even vain effort of man to subtract himself from the need for approval and the chains of conformity.