“….In another place, in another space stands Alberto Sughi, though physically appearing within his rarefied studio, by filtered light, with a canvas on his easel that captures the dying light of day.  The theme of the painter in his studio is united with the themes of melancholy and meditation.  And also, of course, to the idea of death.  It is Leopardi’s view of infinity.  The twilight of the evening contributes to making the painting intense and suggestive.” Vittorio Sgarbi

Alberto Sughi returns to Cesena, his “own” Cesena, with a major anthological exhibition that covers the most important moments of his long, intense career.  The catalogue published for this exhibition brings together more than sixty paintings and covers almost half a century of the artist’s work.  The first works date from 1958: Italy was experiencing its short-lived “economic boom”, yet the artist read between the lines of that promise of affluence; he saw the cracks of unbearable anguish that would take hold of urban man freezing him in immaterial paralysis.  The urban context, initially a place of socialisation, becomes the space where the effective impossibility of interpersonal communication is gauged. And if the city was the backdrop of desolate interior solitude in these first exploits, in the subsequent phase Sughi shifted his investigation to inside the home.  But here too it is useless to search for interior life: a lack of authenticity dominates these beings and the characters that inhabit the canvas seem to be imprisoned for ever in an impenetrable cage of cold selfishness.  This tragic vision culminated in the celebrated Ciclo della Cena (1975-1976).  Among the works that are closer to our time we should mention the vibrant series La sera o della riflessione (on which the artist has been working since 1985) once again at the centre we have a lone man; but his solitude seems less anguished: we have the impression that Sughi’s has found, if not intimate harmony, at least peace with the world. This volume is a precious opportunity to examine almost the entire career of Alberto Sughi and to understand its surprising moral coherence despite its continuous evolution.

Cesena, Biblioteca Malatestiana
24 March - 22 July 2007