BY MARCO GOLDIN
 

A long career aimed at closing every distance with the viewer, establishing proximity and fusion

The long life of Guido Strazza has been, and remains today, a great adventure of the spirit. And because he is a painter, his life is a great adventure of color. And because he is an engraver, his life is also a great adventure of the mark. From all this, it follows that his life has been the beautiful fruit of a supreme harmony - a mastery of maintaining the consistency of meaning amidst the variation of its manifestations. Such an adventure of the spirit has never been a hollow thought, but a talent immersed in the work, always active from one boundary of the labor to the other, marking the points of transition, making us perceive this flowing luminous current that never ceases to beat to the rhythm of its own time. And never alone, never as something scattered, but instead gently strained to bridge the distance, so that it may become proximity, fusion, and the freedom of being.

In his work, one perceives a flowing luminous current that never ceases to beat to the rhythm of its own time

The time that this current beats - light from light but also light from shadow - is a binary time, founded on the expansion of the breath and its withdrawal, founded on presence and absence, on the floating of fullness and emptiness. So that, once manifested, they immediately become painting, without hesitation, with desire, with passion, adapting the tools of color to those of vision. But even before that, since color accompanies light, and color remains a formed thing by virtue of it. Color is already in the eye as a reality that has always existed and only needs to be incarnated in things, to be revealed in the world of objects - or, one might say with even greater reason for Strazza, of phenomena. From its ancient Greek root, a phenomenon is that which manifests itself, that which appears in the light of vision, and therefore, of knowledge.

The miracle of this painting is that it is never thought detached from color, and in the beginning, it was never painting detached from the mark. Strazza’s painting was born from a fusion, from a deep landslide of light that touched those regions where light itself seemed unable to reach. It was born as an instantaneous, rather than gradual, adjustment between color and thought, which immediately became that inseparable unity that produced the painted origin.

His is a binary time, founded on the expansion of the breath and its withdrawal, on presence and absence, on fullness and emptiness

Here, then, is the true concluding point: Strazza chose to lead his eye, and thus his hand, in search of a place that is not only space but also, much more broadly, time. And from the time of vision, it becomes the time of Being - the substance of which everything is woven and with which color is imbued. To recognize the origin is to touch the essence, to achieve that synthesis which is the precise task of the painter along the path that brushes against things without touching them, capturing their strength without the need for description. Such has been the radiant work of Guido Strazza for an entire century. A master.

And suddenly it is painting, without delay, with desire, with passion, aligning the tools of color with those of vision

Our thanks go to the Lucchetta brothers (Gruppo Euromobil) for providing the images accompanying this article