Alberto Sughi - The Two Ages

The iconography of this painting certainly has allegorical meanings and can be defined, in some ways, as symbolist precisely because of its allusion to underlying meanings. This type of subject can be traced back to the artistic language of late nineteenth-century painters such as Moreau, Bocklin, and Puvis des Chavannes, who, while using a primarily figurative language, developed intellectually complex iconographies, full of symbolic and allegorical references. Symbolic iconography in the representation of the ages has, in general, enjoyed a certain degree of diffusion throughout the history of art, considering famous examples such as Giorgione's "The Three Ages of Man" or Gustav Klimt's "The Three Ages of Woman." This type of subject is developed here by Alberto Sughi, but always with its specific character as an investigation conducted along the lines of existentialism and the analysis of human relationships, of a bourgeois world, captured in the everydayness of its gestures and rituals.

Alberto Sughi's artistic poetics recurs in most of his works. The depicted scene, in fact, has an exquisitely symbolic and existential connotation, displaying a paucity of physiognomic details, of objective particulars that might identify the situation or even place it within a social context. Sughi's existentialist art is not interested in external social reality, but rather in the inner reality of man, which the artist explores through his expressive means. The pictorial deformations that characterize Sughi's paintings are a means of expressing his existentialist anxieties. As is his wont, Sughi precisely frames the scene, defining an interior, a restricted space in which the subjects are forced to interact with one another. In this space, the artist highlights internal tensions by expressively deforming the subjects, even when they are in close proximity. The subjects, and particularly the figure of the old man, are imbued with emotional vibrations. These vibrations also resonate in the space of the work, underlining the loneliness and difficulty of the characters in relating to each other.

Alberto Sughi, Cesena 1928 – Bologna 2012, always chose the path of realism throughout his painting career. However, Sughi's realism never had a social orientation; rather, its focus shifted to the human condition, to human solitude: this is why Sughi's painting has been described as "existentialist realism." In the 1960s, Sughi's realism was influenced by Bacon, presenting distortions in his subjects and spatial settings similar to those of the English artist.

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