by Prof. Francesco Carelli

University of Milan

The definition of the problematic in Italo Offredi’s painting allows us to see a tension based on the schematization and extension of the lines of the objects he depicts.   These contrasting representations with lines of force allow the painted subjects to vibrate intensely due to the ever new and lively chromatism in which  Offredi know how to expertly dose the colors making sure the stillness of the paintings is adsorbed giving  the expression of a proper motion.

 

Offredi  has wanted to restore dignity to the human figure, a consistency to still life, a charm to the landscape. At the same time, he has recovered the image in its entirety, he has re-proposed those characteristics that are essential to a Mediterranean vision of reality, arranging the imagination to the precise control of reason and tempering the stimuli of inspiration with the balanced search for an impeccable formal harmony that makes even what is lost in the mists of time and always current.

The artist has signed the legitimate need to belong to the time in which he lives with the search for a stylistic signature that bears his unmistakable mark of modernity. Hence that strong personal imprint that gives his paintings their formal and expressive originality within which it is easy to recognize human content and love for nature. His scheme is realistic: figures of women and men, still lives, cats, objects and houses. Constructed images that circumscribe the environment within a figurality of closed forms and linked to a schematized sense.

Compositional scheme proposed towards an emotional atmosphere with certain references to expressionistic roots.  To make the content alive, he resorts to formal exaggerations through linearity and the strength of color.