Vallombrosa

Through this work, Emilio Pettoruti explored new forms of plastic expression. The town of Vallombrosa, located in the heart of lush forests that extend into the region of Tuscany, was a propitious setting for investigating the problem of the representation of a light autonomous from the real, a central topic in his poetics. The structure of the interior space of the canvas is organized by means of strong oblique lines, which make up for the loss of spatial depth required for the abstraction of the natural. The condensation of light in planes of pure color that stand out against a dark ochre background generates the visual effect of a broken image, recomposed and observed as in a mirror, perceptibly mismatched. It gains cohesion through the superimposition of curved planes, distant allusions to the thickness of the vegetation.