1990-1995 TROMPE L’ŒIL-SHADING

The phase documented here stems from experimentation with new materials and tools, professionally used for the purposes of illustration. The surface of the background or of its separate fractions had up till now been constantly defined and flat. This further development of his work decisively reveals a loss of that homogeneity, in favour of a gradation which introduces the optical effect of three-dimensionality.
The stratification which since the 1960s had been a working but not a perceptive characteristic of his painting, now became, conversely, a trompe l’œil effect, as if the previously transparent, overlapping pages, had now materialized and become opaque.
The journey into the depths of what had been the conceptual field moves on into a perceptive allusion. The attention hitherto focused on the possible development of a system of forms now accentuates instead a centripetal interest in what happens in the single composition.
So we can talk, metaphorically, about the acquisition of a theatrical, scenographic dimension, in which spatial suggestions and allusions previously barred from his work now appear.