“PERSPECTIVES” by Lucia Sarto

“PERSPECTIVES” by Lucia Sarto

Introducing Lucia Sarto’s artworks is always a special privilege to me. Throughout the years, I have had the honour to introduce her art in prestigious locations, such as museums, monumental buildings, castles and other UNESCO sites in Sicily (Cefalù, Monreale, Palermo), as well as in other places in Italy as Rome and Padua. I wish to express my gratitude to Donatella Bedello Melori, the gallery owner who firstly introduced Lucia Sarto’s artworks to me back in 2015. Thanks to this co-operation, I have had the chance to introduce some exhibitions at Melori & Rosenberg Art Gallery, now Ghetto Et Cetera Art Gallery, currently directed with professionalism and selective skills by the Gallery owner Donatella and her daughter Alice Faga.

“Perspectives” is the meaningful title of the exhibition, it offers an enlarged vision of Venice, which is a city full of history and feelings. Lucia Sarto observes beyond the mere view, she rethinks the vedutista concept in a stylistic path which is focused on light and color, and conveys a unique, deep spirit while exploring the inner soul of Venice. The lagoon city becomes an endless source of inspiration, described with elegance through its pulsing memory. An artistic process, with an alchemical chromatic result, which arouses deep feelings and is able to combine the documentary vision with a more intimate creative expression.

With her brush, Lucia Sarto is able to capture the essence of Venice, and turns it into a unique artistic treasure chest. Her artworks reveal a fusion of architecture and landscape, light and shadow, reflections and clouds which unravel with movements. Her pictorial sensitivity is expressed through celestial shades and evocative atmospheres, creating a connection between history and contemporary times, between dream and reality. In a combination of neo-post-impressionism and lyricism, Lucia Sarto’s artworks evoke a poetic experience such as “I am enlightened with immense” (M’illumino d’immenso). In this way invisible is made visible, among parallel horizons which meet in one single escape point. She has the ability to raise emotions and tell stories about both places and people through different artistic genre (from floral to figurative, from still life to still images, to landscapes and life scenes – from the more romantic to more contemporary ones). Lucia is a significant artist not only to critics and galleries, but also to her public who feels to belong to the art that enlightens the immensity of the existence. In symbiosis with visual poetry, Lucia Sarto’s artworks offer a deep contemplation. From many “points of view”, both from her personal experience of Venice and her universal one, she invites to explore the image of this unique city. And it is in this context as well as in others Lucia Sarto has always stood out, for her talent expressed with technical and expressive abilities. In her long career she has been admired by collectors and gallerists from all over the world. Every artwork preserves her academic studies between Turin and Venice and her experience and artistic sensitivities expressed in a long career made of more than 100 exhibitions in Italy, Europe, USA, Japan.

Definitely aware of her academic studies and personal research on the lessons by Canaletto or Carlo and Giovanni Grubacs, she majestically follows a stylistic path of light and colours, which gives to the observer the energy of the places Lucia Sarto tells about, and pervades and livens up their impressions with empathy and unforgettable impressions. From “Voyage Picturesque” and “Grand Tour” of the end of the 18th Century to the use of the “Sketchbooks” of the past, today we find the observation of reality in her photographs she takes during her trips, which resemble similar methods in the use of the darkroom back in the past. Lucia Sarto’s technic method is faithful to a first draft she draws, where she sketches lines, escape points and shape references; afterwards she works on color by painting step by step with more and more precision even in the most far details.

On one hand, you dive in wide views through the truthfulness of “things” while on the other she personifies even the imperceptible evanescence of the shimmering clouds which, translated in emotional atmospheres – such as moods or feelings – nourish the spirit of the public. In this calm suspended happiness, among partial views of streets, bridges, architectures and panoramas, we find a lot of different types and natures of skies, according to the changes of time and seasons in the lagoon city. All of her images palpitate with beats and rhythms full of life and movement, where the artist’s love for the lagoon also embraces the universal feelings of whom loves and lives this city full of languor and nostalgia longing for the change of seasons, showing her ability to seduce us through a snowy Venice in winter as well as the golden light colors of the Summer days. Moreover, in these complex compositio the shimmering white rock of the great architectures stands out among all the colours, which trespasses the river banks and soars, suspended and vain. In this pictorial cycle, the emerald waters stand out with their boats, which fluctuate enveloped in the salty air, which wakens one’s senses up beyond their sight. The chromatic language turns out orchestral, wandering rifts filter, between sky and earth which mirrors in symphonic harmonies among boats, buildings and monuments. In these wide framings with bright result, neat tone-on-tone glares permeate of a touching virtuosity and the care for every small detail is detected because essential for the visual perception of the whole. We can see this from the ripples of the water created by the path of the boats, from the reflections of the brushes flairs which glow with glares towards the top and and in an axonometric vision, with ideal bird’s eye passages towards the roof tiles or until the noble pinnacles of domes or in the decorum made with laces and arabesques up until the arches in St Mark’s. Moreover, we feel wonder while observing the painting “Grand Canal”, as if we would sail carried by a vaporetto, where the fourth scenic wall faces the magnificence and space broadens towards the lingering splendour of suspended time. The contrasts between the decadent charm of old times and the contemporary are even more evident in her most magnificent artwork “San Trovaso”, betrayed by the deterioration and holes in the red walls or in the background some mysterious characters of two masks wearing costumes and holding a lantern (trait-d’union between the past and the present in the memories of an old Venetian splendour). Her vision of the Ghetto Nuovo is more modern, where tourists stroll surrounded by the high walls which contrast with the rest of the city and as a replacement for the eighteenth-century “caricatures” who crammed Venice’s views wearing a costume.

Her “poems of the moment” which “enlighten with immense”, between grace and tenderness, absences and presences, meet “parallel horizons” in one escape point between the visible reality and the invisible thought. Lucia Sarto focuses on Venice as it was an artistic treasure chest, unique and unrepeatable in the world, “Perspectives” is the title which indicates not only the trip of the sight towards infinite, but also the vision beyond the space one can only reach with their heart, and honors with her results Monet’s famous sentence “Venice was too beautiful to be painted”.