The readers 1934

Romualdo Locatelli made "The Readers" with oil paint, and it looks like he was working pretty fast! There’s a real tenderness in the way he’s captured these figures huddled over a book, lost in another world, all in muted greens, browns, and creams. Look at the way he’s built up the form of the dresses with these short, choppy strokes. You can almost feel the weight and texture of the fabric, like thick impasto layers on the canvas. The paint is thin in some parts of the canvas and thick in others. I wonder if the quickness, the rush, of making this painting was something like the feeling of reading a great book? You know, when I’m painting, there’s a moment where things start to click, where the colors and shapes start to sing. I bet Locatelli felt something similar here. His work makes me think of other painters, too, like Édouard Vuillard, who also captured these intimate, everyday moments with such sensitivity. There is something very conversational between them, even across all this time! That's what painting is, though, right? An ongoing dialogue. A painting practice is an ongoing, embodied way of embracing ambiguity and uncertainty.