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Lot Essay
Incendio Notturno belongs among the most mature and complex works that Birolli painted during the last years of his life. Establishing a masterly balance between light and colour and between dream and reality, it is a work that ranks him among the major exponents of abstract painters in Italy in the post war period.
Birolli painted Incendio Notturno (Fire in the Night) during the summer of 1956 in the Cinque Terre. Between 1955 and 1958, Birolli was a frequent visitor to this region of the Ligurian coast and the landscapes and inhabitants of the area were to become a constant source of inspiration for his paintings and his writings during these years. Birolli was so moved by the landscape that it even led to him publishing four articles protesting against the invasion of concrete constructions along the rocky coastline and amongst the vineyards of the region. One phenomenon of the Ligurian countryside struck him in particular: the small bush fires that would accidentally appear in the landscape and which surprisingly to him did not seem to worry the farmers of the area who understood that these fires would burn out before reaching their vineyards. In contrast there were also occasionally larger fires that, enhanced by the strong winds, would sometimes transform the mountainous landscape of the Cinque Terre into a series of fiery "Volcanoes".
Incendio Notturno is the result of the profound effect that these large fires had on the artist's imagination stimulating visions that he transformed in a series of paintings . The vibrant and powerful colours of these works translate the intensity and energy of the fire, erupted during the night. The flames irradiate the nocturnal landscape but although nature has become the source of his inspiration, Birollli's paintings were never strictly naturalistic during this part of his life. Lionello Venturi, the critic of the "Otto Pittori" group, to which Birolli belonged, wrote of the "Cinque Terre" paintings that, although Birolli "has no wish to reproduce things from Nature, he does want to portray things created by his imagination. This is for him his manner of approaching the concrete through lines, forms and colours autonomously expressed in their relation to reality. The 'bursts' of colours of the years 1955 and 1956 seem like conflagrations of spiritualised matter: an energy outside the matter. The motive is here and the reality is there, but it is a reality one finds only in the paintings of Birolli" (Lionello Venturi, quoted in exh. cat., New York, Catherine Viviano Gallery, Birolli, April-May 1958).
Birolli painted Incendio Notturno (Fire in the Night) during the summer of 1956 in the Cinque Terre. Between 1955 and 1958, Birolli was a frequent visitor to this region of the Ligurian coast and the landscapes and inhabitants of the area were to become a constant source of inspiration for his paintings and his writings during these years. Birolli was so moved by the landscape that it even led to him publishing four articles protesting against the invasion of concrete constructions along the rocky coastline and amongst the vineyards of the region. One phenomenon of the Ligurian countryside struck him in particular: the small bush fires that would accidentally appear in the landscape and which surprisingly to him did not seem to worry the farmers of the area who understood that these fires would burn out before reaching their vineyards. In contrast there were also occasionally larger fires that, enhanced by the strong winds, would sometimes transform the mountainous landscape of the Cinque Terre into a series of fiery "Volcanoes".
Incendio Notturno is the result of the profound effect that these large fires had on the artist's imagination stimulating visions that he transformed in a series of paintings . The vibrant and powerful colours of these works translate the intensity and energy of the fire, erupted during the night. The flames irradiate the nocturnal landscape but although nature has become the source of his inspiration, Birollli's paintings were never strictly naturalistic during this part of his life. Lionello Venturi, the critic of the "Otto Pittori" group, to which Birolli belonged, wrote of the "Cinque Terre" paintings that, although Birolli "has no wish to reproduce things from Nature, he does want to portray things created by his imagination. This is for him his manner of approaching the concrete through lines, forms and colours autonomously expressed in their relation to reality. The 'bursts' of colours of the years 1955 and 1956 seem like conflagrations of spiritualised matter: an energy outside the matter. The motive is here and the reality is there, but it is a reality one finds only in the paintings of Birolli" (Lionello Venturi, quoted in exh. cat., New York, Catherine Viviano Gallery, Birolli, April-May 1958).