La Finestra 1953

Bruno Cassinari made La Finestra with oil on canvas, and it's an exercise in how to make something from very little. Look at the surface, the paint isn't trying to trick you. It's a painting, and it revels in being just that. Notice that big blue rectangle. It's not quite flat, but vibrates with subtle shifts in tone. It almost feels like looking at Rothko, but then you're snapped back by the clunky, almost haphazard way the window frame is rendered. There's a kind of beautiful clumsiness, a directness that I find super appealing. It's this tension between the sublime and the everyday that really makes the painting sing. You know, it reminds me a little of Fairfield Porter, in the way he took these totally banal domestic scenes and turned them into something monumental through paint. It’s a reminder that art isn't about slickness or perfection, but about embracing the messy, imperfect reality of being human.