Bernardino Toppi

THE TIMELESS

REFLECTIONS ON MY WORK

Bernardino Toppi

I would like to arrive at more elusive and discreet art, stripped of anything superfluous, where shapes fade leaving more room for dreams (like the first lines traced by man, with rudimentary means, a little earth or smoke black on a rough surface).
However, I am also looking for something magic and mysterious that responds to my need to be fascinated by a piece of work emanating from a spiritual atmosphere and abolishing the notion of time and space.
Painting that cannot be dated, that stimulates sensitivity and intrigues the curiosity and leaves eye free to discover a multitude of different things.
My universe is made up of places, dreams, memories, processions, festivals, scenes taken from life. There are men, women, horses, donkeys, dogs, landscapes… In fact there is quite simply life, but life and histories suspended in a dream-like dimension.
The motives for the Venice subjects : because I like the fusion of European gothic with decorative accents of Arab origin an the precious fluency of the Byzantine tradition which gives us a town of beauty, elegance and refinement.

Bernardino TOPPI

 

I like the rupestrian aspect, the grain and forms of the fresco. It reminds me of the Lascaux caves : they are real museums; nothing as beautiful has been done since.
My inspiration is people and scenes from everyday life... I develop a world and a personality by comparing myself to that reality. I have travelled and made many sketches in Southern Italy and Sicily... Back in the studio, these notes remind me of the feelings I had the instant I made them and I try to share them. My painting is not accessible to everybody, it is special.
I believe our environment influences us : would Bonnard have painted the same way had he lived in Japan ?
I paint my childhood, which I spent between Rome and Anticoli-Corrado, in the Roman countryside.
Italian and foreign artists have gone to Anticoli-Corrado for centuries because it is such a beautiful place.
The quiet, the peacefulness of its religious and rural feast days, the farm labourers, the animals and the trees have always captured my imagination.

 

Bernardino TOPPI

 

The painting must have an impression of unity. Then one must perceive a trace, an impression, of faded colours, a diluted imprint, a powder effect.
I want to get to the essential, almost to the archaic.
It has to be simple. It is a road I experiment with more every day.
"A fresco" painting has the merit of being the quickest and most grandiose as well as the most durable kind of painting.

 

Bernardino TOPPI

 

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