S'invola 2007

Enzo Cucchi made this small oil painting on canvas, dominated by warm reds and browns, with touches of green. I can almost feel Enzo Cucchi at work. I imagine him outside somewhere, squinting at the sun, trying to capture the light hitting these gnarly trees. The paint looks quite thin in places, allowing the canvas texture to peek through, while elsewhere, it's built up into these really satisfying ridges, especially on the tree trunks. Look at the way he's applied those vertical green lines! They're like dripping tears, or maybe Spanish moss, but they definitely add this eerie quality to the scene. I bet Cucchi was thinking about memory, or maybe even loss, while he painted this. It reminds me of some of Kiefer’s landscapes, all heavy with history and emotion. You know, it's like these artists are all in conversation, riffing off each other, trying to make sense of the world through paint. And that's why painting matters, because it’s a conversation that never really ends.