The Lucio Saffaro exhibition at the Palazzo Fava in Bologna

The from Lucius Saffaro (Trieste, 1929 – Bologna, 1998) is a complex figure: since the first approaches in the mid-20th century, his painting has been consciously oriented towards physics – a subject in which he graduated – with works that combine the two connect different areas of knowledge.
At Palazzo Fava in central Bologna, the exhibition “Journey into the Unknown” curated by Claudio Cerritelli and Gisella Vismara offers an overview of his artistic career through a hundred works ranging from the author’s youth to maturity, trying to examine every aspect his research.

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The Lucio Saffaro exhibition in Bologna

There is always a double value in Saffaro’s works, as if his artistic products were inspired by his propensity for mathematical studies: looking at his oil paintings, one recognizes the permeability between these two disciplines, in which pictorial space becomes a field of spatial studies.
From the 1960s, polyhedrons became the main theme of the artist’s work: the polyhedron is a clear mathematical reference that is transformed in Saffaro’s works and linked to the dream dimension.
The Star of Original work CCXCII It is one of the works that best reveals the new imaginary to which the artist refers: the star polyhedron – subject of the painting – is placed in a metaphysical space and appears restless, disturbed; The geometric study of form seems to have been abandoned and replaced by the dreamlike vision that accompanies all series of experiments of the time.
Lucio Saffaro explores time and space; In his painting, these elements become carriers of an imagination of feelings and emotions, and the forms become empathetic.

Clare Battaglino