Lara Leonardi

by Beatrice Buscaroli

The world of Lara Leonardi is a suspended question. Between her and her painting, between her and her decision to devote herself completely to painting, there is a powerful screen of an archetype, of history and there is the example of the artists who preceded her. There is honor that she pays tribute to all of this. Her strokes are strong, decisive, like those who do not have time to think about what to do, but instead does it. Who decides to dissolve her inclination - her love of Amedeo Modigliani, for example - exhibiting it with limitless courage.

This screen is what painting, the absolute best paining of our history left in inheritance: Lara approaches all this by working with secret humility and total and pure resolve. The strokes are strong, overlapping decisively, not leaving room for even a breath of air: they are concentrated and rigid. Her faces burst from the canvas with a mature sense of solution and resolution. The forms change, the projects change, the motivations change, but the distant structure that gives Lara Leonardi the model of the penetrating eyes of Modigliani, does not stop her from being inventive, innovate, adding her time to that time: a time, among other things, who knows why, was not favorable to the author.
And therefore, it all makes sense. Strong and compact, oval heads and tightly shut mouths, long strips of white lead, large areas: certainty. The shapes also caricature to mind, cutout doll, pictures from old magazines: they have a slight ancient patina that, each time you look at them seems to be alive again and to give something again. In a world which does not know what to do with painting, but she continues painting constantly, because it seems to be a destiny, a task, for everyone. For those who dare to put those colors and give them the full meaning of a face and for those who wonder who it is, and why they are there (...).