Giuseppe Onesti - Birds and Pollution

The depiction of animals in art has ancient origins, even appearing in primitive cave paintings. For religious reasons, various types of animals appear in the works of various ancient civilizations. It was especially in the Middle Ages, within the International Gothic style, that animal depictions became widespread as true life portraits, both within works of art and in notebooks of drawings and sketches. The presence of animals as subjects in art remained constant until the contemporary era. Within the vast and versatile oeuvre of the painter Giuseppe Onesti, the cycle dedicated to birds is a very extensive one comprising numerous works. The artist undertook extensive research into the figure of the bird, its wing structure, and the dynamism of its movements in flight, which led him to conceive diverse expressive modules. Giuseppe Onesti often depicts the figure of the bird as imprisoned, impeded in flight by strings that attempt to restrain it. Its struggle to free itself and take flight again becomes a powerful symbolic image and a social denunciation of man's oppression of nature. In this particular work, it is pollution itself that imprisons the bird, entangling it in its dark plots.

This work is highly significant in helping us appreciate the depth of Giuseppe Onesti's expressive exploration within his pictorial cycle dedicated to birds. In this painting, the artist achieves an almost informal stylistic register where the force of the pictorial gesture prevails. The bird's figure is virtually dismantled, its volumes expanding across the canvas, transformed into pure pictorial matter. Through the painter's vehement gesture, the work conveys the strength with which the bird attempts to break the black bonds that bind it and finally resume its flight. Everything, therefore, is resolved in a complex and extreme chromatic impasto reminiscent of certain works by Emilio Vedova. The artist gives very little importance to form in this work, but just enough to convey the symbolic power of the subject, in that dynamic movement of the wings flailing in an almost desperate struggle. The dramatic scope of the theme developed in the work coincides perfectly with the dramatic force of the execution, in a coherent work in which the artist has managed to find a stylistic signature that is congenial to him.

Giuseppe Onesti was born in San Giovanni di Casarsa della Delizia in 1944. He trained in Argentina, where he had emigrated with his family, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tandil. His career began in the 1960s and has seen him featured in over six hundred solo and group exhibitions not only in Italy but also in Austria, France, Germany, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Argentina, Canada, Japan, and the USA. In addition to his painting, Giuseppe Onesti is also known for his performances, happenings, and installations.

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