Borgo Museo | Affreschi 1975
Biography
Luca Alinari, born in Florence on October 27, 1943, discovers his passion for painting at a very young age which becomes the way of expressing himself, almost replacing the word. However, he does not complete organic studies in that direction, in fact he attends the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy and deals with literary criticism: he will be editor of magazines and reviewer of fiction texts, also working in written and television communication. In 1979 he founded and directed the art magazine “Signorina Rosina” while actively living within the artistic and intellectual world, so much so that not only the major Italian and foreign art critics write about him, but also poets and writers such as Gatto, Sanguineti, Rea, Parise and the Nobel Prize for Literature Josè Saramago. The artist is not only interested in figurative painting, but also participates in events, happenings and avant-garde theatrical pieces. Luca died in Florence on March 15, 2019.
Philosophy
His first personal exhibition dates back to 1969, in a gallery in Florence. Among his first stylistic references is the Neodada, which stimulates him to try his hand at the most diverse techniques: drawing with the use of fluorescent colours, decals, collages and photographic transpositions. On the painting front, on the other hand, he succeeds in suggesting cues and ideas that will then be taken up by Italian painting developed at the turn of the seventies and eighties, such as the Nuovi-Nuovi movement where artists are in tune with artistic methods in vogue in the United States , who use kitsch and decoration, while correcting their excesses with greater formal sobriety, emotionally controlled and playfully stylised, and the Transavantgarde which theorises a return to manual skills, to the joy of painting. The fundamental element of his painting is the absolute absence of perspective planes, his compositions recall the innocence of childhood as if they were imaginary journeys in childhood memories. His paintings, real fairytale worlds, are characterised by the lively, almost vivid, application of colours. These worlds constitute a sort of dreamy metaphor of the events of our time and are expressed through a precision of the stroke, the observation of nature and human attitudes.
Artwork in Castagno
Alinari’s “November” fresco has unfortunately been ruined over time, making it almost invisible, due to the materials used and the weather conditions; in fact, in 2020 it was restored or rather redone (due to insufficient photographic documentation) by Sarah Manca, restorer and inhabitant of Castagno. The friend and colleague Fabio De Poli recalls how Luca Alinari used to use vinyl glue in his works to give the painting a third dimension; here too, after having created a solid color background, which is assumed to be light blue, Alinari uses vinavil to create many short strokes and dots, stripes and “stars” that when they dry become transparent; finally over these he draws us with inks or fluorescent colours. Some inhabitants also remember the legend of the tuna: Alinari used to joke and it seems he enjoyed telling that inside those small bubbles of glue, he had hidden pieces of tuna.
