The Sleeping Lady – Gli incontri della Luna (Moon’s Encounters)

Pier Giorgio De Pinto, “The Sleeping Lady”, 2022 – acrylic tempera on cardboard – 94,5 x 119,5 cm. Courtesy Raucci/Santamaria Studio Project, Milano.

Work shown at “Gli Incontri Della Luna” (Moon’s Encounters) group exhibition at Raucci/Santamaria Studio Project, Milano together with works by: Carlo Busiri Vici (1926/2019) – Francesco Pedraglio – Norbert Schwontkowski (1949/2013) – Enrico Tealdi – Padraig Timoney – Pietro Villani (1866/1935).

The work was inspired by the gate in the Ciani park in Lugano, Switzerland. This particular gate faces directly onto Lake Lugano and does not open towards a house.
The execution of the work recalls the old posters that advertised the beauties of Ticino and above all of Lugano as a place for holidays during the 50s and 60s.

Gli Incontri Della Luna (Moon’s Encounters)

In nature there is no legible form when this is not delineated by light. In the darkness of the night, when there are no stars or moon illuminating the landscape, everything is enveloped in the impenetrability of absolute darkness. In a dark and blind atmosphere like this, only the light of the moon can delineate and illuminate the shape of things. A perception made possible by a reflected light. Even if it remains invisible, the subject who operates the vision remains hidden and the viewer perceives only the revelation offered by the light of the moon shield. Although the vision is romantic, it is not clear to us how our altered perception, accustomed to the continuous availability of artificial light, does not allow us to understand the natural state of things. In a pale atmosphere, permeated with mystery, everything appears intimate, silent and different to our eyes and ready to offer us a new vision of itself. In the absence of a clear visual definition, we unconsciously and automatically complete the shapes, helping us with the reconstruction of the image learned from the experience of sunlight. The encounters of the moonlight, then, take shape as a synthesis of a Neoplatonic vision. A synthesis that has always lived in our minds and concretizes, in the uncertainty of the perceived image, the reality of the world.

Umberto Raucci, June 2022