Giuseppe "Lazzaro" Fornoni - Pope Francis

Portraiture is one of the most widespread artistic expressions, especially in painting, but also in sculpture, throughout the ages. Portraiture is, first and foremost, a description of the subject depicted, an attempt to capture their physiognomy and individual characteristics truthfully and naturally. With the progressive evolution of artistic research, the physiognomic description of the subject has also been accompanied by a psychological one. Therefore, over the centuries, portraiture has also become a means of introspective investigation of the subject, their character, and their state of mind. The processes of abstraction brought about by contemporary art have contributed to this type of investigation.

In this work, artist Giuseppe Fornoni creates a portrait of Pope Francis using an extraordinary silkscreen technique, capturing the pontiff's features with vivid clarity and hyperrealistic precision. It is a portrait of incredible objective force, its evocative power fueled by the negative composition. The interplay of shadows is also remarkable, further enhancing the extraordinary precision of detail in the almost photographic rendering of the face. The figure of the pontiff thus overlaps with an artificial landscape of domes and imaginative architecture, making this work even more compelling, in keeping with the visionary poetics of "Lazarus."

Lazarus (aka Giuseppe Fornoni) was born in Bergamo. Completely self-taught, he began his study of humanity with remarkable works executed in various techniques, depicting humanity as "suffering," pervaded, or rather, "pierced" by the Divine through its avenging Angels. His nature as an eternal explorer always led him to explore colors that pair well with the black and white of his canvases, now focusing on the surrounding reality, bringing to life in his paintings the toil and sweat of his "workers at work." He approaches American Expressionist neorealism, providing us with a "crowd" of figures constantly in motion, almost symbolizing the frenetic pace that characterizes this millennium. Precisely at this moment when man no longer has time to stop and reflect, to think about himself, the artist feels the need to capture the "small, everyday gestures of the common man" (now commonplace), giving them a particular meaning on his canvases, which represent the very essence of life. It is the materialization of the many "fleeting moments" that belong to each of us in the great turmoil of existence. His paintings therefore primarily represent the story of a soul, passing from sadness to joy, from darkness to light, and longing for its colors to sing with full voice.

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