Aligi Sassu - The Surprise

As is often the case with Aligi Sassu's artistic output, the iconography of this work is mythological and essentially symbolist. In this case, however, the artist sets aside his favorite subject, the horse, to create a scene featuring the female figure. Indeed, another key focus of Sassu's interest is the exaltation of the human body, especially the nude, whose plastic and anatomical qualities he emphasizes. This scene of nymphs caught bathing, captured at a moment of maximum dynamic tension, thus becomes a pretext for the artist's pictorial celebration of the dynamism and beauty of the female body.

The etching technique employed by Aligi Sassu in this print takes on a distinct freshness and spontaneous execution. This owes much to the artist's skill, who manages to construct the representation with a rapid and concise touch while maintaining narrative clarity and concreteness of form. Even in this mythological subject, the great dynamism of Aligi Sassu's pictorial style remains unchanged; the entire composition is dynamic and extremely vibrant. Even the choice of colors takes on decidedly expressionist overtones, with the stark contrast offered by the pink of the flesh, the intense blue of the water, and the green of the vegetation.

Aligi Sassu, born in Milan in 1912 and died in 2000, was a painter and sculptor. His painting focused primarily on the representation of movement and physical strength, which is why the subject of a man on horseback was always congenial to him. In the late 1970s, he and Bruno Munari drafted the pictorial manifesto "Dynamism and Muscular Reform," which called for a return to anti-naturalistic forms in a dynamic sense. Much of his painting, moreover, is inspired by Delacroix and his struggles.

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