Biography
The challenge Francesa Aristei has set herself is that of finding the right balance between local and global, the detail and the overall, the ideal and the contingent, by way of using the relation between colour and shape, with skill and sensitivity. With her rare technical ability, the artist treads lightly along the edge between portrait painting (the faithful rendering of individual physiognomy) and a representation of ideal beauty, meaning the shape which, though clearly representing an individual, maintains the general parameters of proportional harmony. Francesca Aristei’s works are therefore part of the tradition of the ideal mapped in their time by Raphael and Canova, who the artist looks to not to copy but to understand the secret to achieving a balance between the Platonic ideal in terms of form and the particular nature of the man, woman or child that she has before her. This is the reason behind her choice of colours not matching those of the real world, with her opting instead for a monochromatic solution that shifts perception to a plane no longer that of daily life, but of the eternal and the absolute.
Marco Bussagli
