A painter should never illustrate his work to others; it must be his works to speak of him and for him. But after more than fifty years of artistry, I feel the need to clarify—to myself, first and foremost—

the motivations that have guided changes in my work and the chronology of its different phases. I began painting at a very tender age, as a self-taught student, for fun. Then, thanks to a chance encounter with an aged Medical Doctor and Painter, I discovered and understood the Informal and with it, the possibility to lend—through physical matter, through symbols and colours—body to emotion. I was fascinated by this new possibility. I promptly abandoned the figurative and began to consider painting from another point of view: that of art as a means of expression and communication at
more intimate, higher levels. I worked and worked. But I realized that something was missing. It was my unconscious that resolved the problem: the human figure began to emerge ever more frequently from my paintings, almost overbearingly, enriched by that freedom that the Informal experience had allowed me to discover. As the height of human symbolism, of nature, of the feelings and values of life, I could not but choose woman and I began, therefore, to paint her in all of her aspects: as Mother, Lover, Companion.

In successive paintings, light—which until then had been suffused and mysterious—transformed itself. My figures illuminated themselves to such an extent that they themselves became sources of light immersed in uncontaminated natural surroundings. That was to be the most positive period of my work. But my unquiet character continued to dig deeper, in an attempt to understand. My need to examine myself from within gave rise to the double, the reflected image in which the figure mirrors itself, in order to see itself, in an effort to recognise itself. At that time, there appeared horizontal and transversal colour schemes in my painting which leant breakage and which

accentuated intimate themes.

During the 1970s, I was seized by the angst of reality. No one spoke yet of ecology, but the theme was already in the air. I left the canvas for a while and passed to painting on glass, a fragile and difficult medium to work with. To this substance, I confided my human, naturalistic, and religious symbols. I toured Italy, giving shows in cultural Circles, where I let fall to earth my works which, shattering to pieces, shocked those present and allowed me to lend my small contribution to sounding the alarm against our self-destruction, our destruction of the environment and of our values.

I have always been isolated in my work. Perhaps it was also for this reason that I decided at a certain point to take refuge in an old, dilapidated castle surrounded by marvellous woods of secular Chestnut trees, in Montebibico, a village not far from my city of Spoleto. Every morning I was obliged to walk for kilometres among magical woods of radiant, vivid colours in order to reach my studio among the simple, earnest mountain folk, and my work headed off in yet another direction. Amongst the Chaos of Contemporary Art and the art of our time, I clung to the dream and the hope of a better world. My works became further enriched with colours, with light, with a lust for life. The paintings are destined by nature for people, for environments, for houses. I believe the only possibility that remains to an artist, today, is that of transmitting, through his paintings, both his positivism and the call of his sorrowful poetry.

Now I paint in the ancient surroundings of the centre of my city, Spoleto. I am surrounded by my works, ranging from 1947 to today, which allows me—albeit along general lines—to trace the itinerary of my labours, which I have attempted to describe here. I believe I have worked and continue to work with humility, albeit full of the limitations of my culture and my means. I have always painted with profound conviction, honesty and great enthusiasm.

Sergio Bizzarri