Fundadores De Porto Alegre 1962

Aldo Locatelli’s mural, *Fundadores De Porto Alegre*, probably made with oils, presents a commanding group portrait, a scene depicting the founding of Porto Alegre. The painting’s colour palette is muted, dominated by browns, greys, and blues. I can imagine Locatelli, back in the studio, trying to orchestrate this historical scene. Thinking about how he would have wrestled with the composition – a large group, all jostling for space and significance. How do you give each figure their due, their moment in the sun, without it becoming a muddle? The central figure’s outstretched arm is a clever trick, creating dynamism and pulling us into the scene. His is the most saturated colour in the painting, drawing our eye. The mural is a conversation, like the kind that all artists are having with each other, across time and space. You can almost see echoes of Renaissance painting here. Locatelli has taken the classicism of those old masters, but then infused it with his own modern sensibility. It's a painting about history but made by a painter very much alive in his own time. Painting, after all, is like that: an echo chamber of ideas and feelings bouncing back and forth.