Marisa Zattini - Idola english text - Onorio Bravi

by Marisa Zattini

There are idols and idola, “prejudices”: Francis Bacon (1561- 1626) used exactly this word, Idola. This evocative hermetic word, with a magic and alchemic sound, therefore used to have a “different” connotation. I find it appropriate to mention it here because of its sound and “similarity” suggestion, even though Onorio Bravi’s painting leads us to an art section where prejudices should be abandoned. There are only primary concretions of places, deities, idols... harmonising agglutinating figures or landscapes. Everything here seems to come from the depths of the earth and the sky. I will then attempt to outline a “glossary” for this magic painting of his - unravelling between mythology, dream and fairy tale - as if it were Rosetta’s Stone.

The alphabet used by Onorio Bravi in his artworks consists of imaginative elements as seals for alluvial visions. They range from the “human shapes”, to “radiant idols”; from “multiple architectures” - be they hut-shaped or turreted - to “flowery roads”; from the rectangular “variable geometry suns” to “spiritual trees” and to faces with an intense inner fire. Each element is therefore a relived, recomposed bit by bit tale. Exploration through a joyful and tragic colour-figure variety. There are nocturnal skies, glimpses of a cosmic time: changes, dances, rituals, raised arms (victorious or surrendering?), bows, spears, caves, shadows, encounters, abandonements... Painting as a mirror of inexhaustible transmutation.

Marisa Zattini

                                         translated by Cetra Congressi S.r.l. Flavia Corina Di Saverio