Page 44 - GIAMPAOLO TALANI

series of paintings completed in recent years. Because Talani seems moved by a new
prolific frenzy, all of the characters who have crowded his imagination, now must face
the violent force of the wind. The hand of the artist is guided around the figure, by
an intense rippling of emotions in an anxious desire to freeze the action at its fullest
moment, on the canvas. We can deduce this from the reading of Men on the high
sea (cat.) dated 1999, where we can discern with difficulty three young men emerging
from the waves of a sea agitated by the wind. Also, in The wind and the fish (cat.)
of the same year, two typical figures on the waterfront lose the iconic immobility in
order to permit the expression of more fragile and temporary emotions, obtained by the
trembling movement that dilates volumes and sound.
The work that Talani chose to represent this show also belongs to this period: The night
of the full moon (1998 cat.). He breathes a breath of mysterious sensuality into this work,
which is one of his most evident themes. Here, the rose as symbol returns, clenched
between the lips of the protagonist, frozen together with the body of a young woman,
who elegantly reclines on a sofa, expressing her full and explosive sensuality. But, it is a
painting with an appreciable softness and appropriateness of language, reinforced by an
attention to the colour relationships, modulated from golden to azure-blue tones, which
create precious transformations on the sharp expanse of the depths.
This is a brief repose from the disturbing vision of the windswept waterfront. Talani,
although burning with an anxious need to escape form it, doesn’t renounce this vision,
and as we will see, throughout the span of his entire carrier, he abandons it many times
only to return with new designs and implications.
Lost stories and Fish seekers, which are part of a group of paintings painted from 1999
to 2001, find their particular significance in a series of insistent angles, repeated in rapid
succession, from the position where the painter seems frozen, waiting for his characters,
whose destinies meet and are tied together precisely by this plot. The protagonists of this
new pictorial phase continue to be that crowd of adventurers who Talani send out across
the waterfront like messengers of the human saga, imbuing them with a renewed sense
of sincere solidarity, that make them even more real and significant.

Companions in the wind – an element by now ever present in each composition - and
in the sharing of their memories, they are proud dignitaries of this world who vagabond
without a destination, stopping in front of the painter-viewer for just a moment as if
they were distracted by his presence, as we see in Walks in the fog (cat). They show him
the fish that the tide has brought up (Two men with fish, cat., Bathers with fish, cat.) in
a happy but slightly ironic manner, jokingly lyrical, as if they feel some sort of friendly
connection with him.
This is also a moment in which the shadows are paramount (Talani will soon expand
upon this theme in a series of paintings which have them as their exclusive subject). They
originate from a dark sun at its zenith, as in Stormy sea (2000 cat.). Here, the seascape is
stretched out in a rigid and disturbing angle into the lower areas of the painting. It is
paired up with three shapes that reflect the colours of the painting and are mixed into
the light of the surround. We have a recurring invitation to read the double meaning of
the work, as we had in A strong sea wind, which plays upon the understood presence/
absence of body and shadow (soul) and their ability to prove their existence in the real
world.
They are instable forms that contain all the power of memories, of an interior echo, that
Talani imprints with particular energy onto the canvas, grasping without hesitation

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