Cavaliere che cade 1982

Gustavo Foppiani made Cavaliere che cade with paint on some kind of board, but when, where and with what materials, exactly, I couldn't tell you. I can only imagine the decisions that went into this strange, beautiful little painting. The artist is pulling from all sorts of sources, right? Like, is this image from a tapestry, or perhaps some other kind of folk art? I’m wondering if Foppiani was trying to channel a spirit, or make a new, more personal kind of folklore. He's playing with these dark fields of browns and ochres, setting the stage for this ghostly white horse, and the tiny human, who’s not quite falling but seems to have lost control. We can see the brushstrokes, the way he moved the paint around the surface, and the marks that tell a story of intention. It is so much like the work of other painters. This work inspires my own creative practice because it reminds me that art-making is a conversation across time.