Corte d'Appello 1945

In this painting by Enrico Donati, titled Corte d'Appello, you can see the artist's hand at work, swirling and coaxing forms from the paint. The palette is an earthy mix of oranges and greens, set against a brooding blue, and the canvas feels like a world in itself. I can imagine Donati in his studio, wrestling with the image, trying to bring something into being. There's a real tension in the painting, a sense of something struggling to emerge. Look at the way the colors blend and bleed into each other, creating these strange, ambiguous shapes. It's like he's letting the paint itself dictate the direction of the work. And that one little red tendril reaching out to the light. I just love that. Donati was one of the original Surrealists in exile in New York, and in that sense, this painting feels related to the biomorphic forms of Miro and the automatic gestures of Masson, who were all figuring out how to get the unconscious into painting. It's a reminder that painting is always a conversation, an ongoing exchange of ideas and inspirations.