From the eternal cities of Plato to the invisible cities of Calvino.
Roberto Perotti’s meaning of painting
At the beginning, the paintings of Roberto Perotti refer to an abstract painting made of soft shapes and strict symbolism rules. In these paintings there is certainly the influence of the art works by Rauschemberg and Pollock. From 1998 onwards (between the end of the millennium and the beginning of the second era) the paintings of Roberto Perotti change enormously. After more than twenty years made of paintings related to the creation and to the informal symbolism, Roberto Perotti starts painting simple chromatic shapes that entail both pictorial knowledge and technique.
This type of painting is made both of simple signs and of complex architecture where nature, culture and art are strictly bond in a nice harmony. This result is far away from kitsch and from the pictorial and artistic flow typical of post-modernism known as transavantgarde. What characterizes this type of painting is the transcendence of things. It reminds the past but it tries to shape the future made of desiring harmonies.
In the paintings, the rhythm is characterized by the absence of colour that alternates to the fullness of colour. These paintings are full of light within the colours: the metaphysical light that represents the present time turmoil and at the same time it summarizes centuries of fights between civilizations and religions; it is in these fights that the men try to look for a balance between the tradition and the future.
The metaphysical light and the surreal colours can be found in this type of painting. It is essential but at the same time it is full of significance since it refers to the “meaning” of the history of our culture. This is the meaning that the paintings of Roberto Perotti evoke.
The universal and religious questions that the contemporary man asks himself emerge in the paintings of Roberto Perotti.
What materializes in these art works are: the welcoming gulfs, the mountains that limit the man’s eternal challenge, the houses that border the sea, the universal and invisible cities and the domes. They all bring back the need of a new reassuring fullness that can give comfort to the general discouragement.
Certainly, pictorial and creative aptitudes belonging to the initial phase of the XI century are evoked.
The roughness and the simplicity, the sense of the rhythm and the sobriety of the art masters come up beautifully in these paintings with evocations related to the nature with its eternal cycles and to the representation of the environments.
This type of painting strongly links the primitive and clear beauty of the Middle-Age painters to the need of architectonically designing the city which is typical of the Late Renaissance. It is the need of evoking and of representing these two aspects of art and the fear of loosing them that push Roberto Perotti to create his unique art works.
Therefore, it is after 1999 that these types of paintings of Roberto Perotti emerge and it is in their colours and traits that it is possible to see elements of the Middle Age and of the XVI century.
It is in these art works that emerge the need to create a circle that comprehends everything and where it is possible to circumscribe the man with all of his pain, his words, his needs of works of art and of sacredness.
ALESSANDRA LANCELLOTTI
trad. Alessandra Di Falco