PAOLO RIZZI

What do we see in Franco Beraldo's painting?

Only a landscape, a navy, a still life?

No. We see the reflection of an ancient civilisation of painting: hence the harmony of forms, the sweetness of colours, the transfiguration of objects, the very air that circulates and becomes atmosphere. We see a "golden measure" that descends from the ancient Greeks and Romans, but which has also increasingly become an irrepressible need of modern culture. We see the feeling of a Mediterranean Sea that becomes the road to an adventure of the spirit. We see the lightness and transparency of the Veneto colour, the sensitivity of the great masters of the past. And at the same time we see the very essence of painting, which we might say is Renaissance, delicately revived.

This we see in Beraldo's painting. But more. We see an aspiration to serenity, to peaceful relationships, to the hope of a better world. It is the antidote to the neuroses and convulsions of our time: a balm that descends directly from the eyes to the soul. That light - of course, the light that slips away in Beraldo's works - is no longer physical, but spiritual. Thus, we see how the skilful technique (oil and tempera, watercolour and fresco, up to the most recent glass) is no longer at the service of a pure pleasure of the senses. Technique also becomes a language that leads the artist towards an expressiveness that is entirely his own and, at the same time, that of each of us. Light, air, colour: a way of breathing in what is around us. Not poisons: but a subtle pungent desire to be free, to begin a journey there, among the clear skies of our imagination. What do we see, finally? The very classicism of painting.

Paolo Rizzi