Crollava 2007

Enzo Cucchi painted ‘Crollava’ with oils on canvas, and its brooding presence really gets under my skin. The palette is kept simple - warm, smoky yellows and inky blacks - but the feeling is far from simple. I imagine Cucchi in the studio, maybe late at night, head full of visions, pushing the paint around, smearing and layering, until this strange scene appears. What is it, exactly? A collapsing tower, a dreamscape, or an emotional state? That dark dome looms, heavy with who-knows-what, while the city below glows with a sickly, unreal light. The paint is applied loosely, almost messily, but every stroke feels deliberate. It's like he's wrestling with something, trying to pin down a feeling or memory that's just out of reach. I see echoes of other painters here - maybe De Chirico’s eerie cityscapes, or Guston’s clunky, melancholic forms. It's all part of the same conversation, isn't it? Artists riffing off each other, borrowing and transforming, trying to make sense of the world in their own way. And ultimately, that’s what painting is: a way of feeling, of thinking, of being in the world.