For a painter like Augusto Baratto, whose roots were originally in the Veneto region, the beginning could only be influenced by impressionism. And this continued for many years. Success was not lacking for this painter from Robegano; after all, his technical training (from his artisan work to the more profound aspects of restoration) helped him, as did his cultural background from the State School of Art in Venice, with professors such Dinon and Bortoluzzi, and his friendship with artist Marco Novati. His art flowed smooth, shining, nourished by a precise taste for tonal colours. But this was not to be enough. For a long time Baratto had been observing European artists. He admired Pollok and Vedova, but also maestros such as Felice Carena. Hence in 1974 things began to change. He started to paint in a more conceptual manner and then later also more symbolically, and not only with the pleasantness of chromatic composition. In 1974, at a contest in Lozzo, he exhibited a composite painting in which the impressionistic motif - plainly evident in some of his painting - was superimposed by a peculiar and fascinating collage insert, referring to the confusion of modern civilization - with a cut-out medicine box, “Viamal”, and a coin - it was clear that Baratto had understood the conflictual elements between two opposing worlds: the natural and the artificial. Ever since then Baratto embarked upon a dual path, filled with deceit but also with “truth”. His taste for the beauty of art remained, but was also portrayed (in a striking style) inserting strange elements, such as for example a collage of zip fasteners. These zip fasteners, replacing traditional colours, did not betray them, rather on the contrary, intensifying them. A similar procedure is visible in another painting dated 1974, with the artist impressing his own footprints on the brown and dense sand of a beach. Fantasy and reality merged together completely. By this time the insertion of real objects in his works of art had become a characteristic feature in Baratto’s paintings. In 1976 he added the shape of a spiral made using a Coke can, he added a pack of cigarette and wisp of black smoke, with the whole picture hinting directly at car races. That kind of image corresponded however to the historical period of the seventies, blatantly influenced by Pop Art and therefore with objects exerting an almost brutal influence. Baratto however had understood that this way of working could lead to the negation of painting. “I was scared of it - he says today - I was too involved: I had to give it up”. From that moment onward a free typology developed and the artist drew inspiration from it. It is curious (and symptomatic) that although linear and spiral tensions overwhelmed, at the same time landscapes and natural figures - a sort of coming back to impressionism - imposed themselves. The spiral motif meant a cosmic vitality, above substance, while the landscape denoted a taste for land, that’s to say a representation of feelings and indirectly of traditional culture. Baratto moved more and more towards the sense of freedom that grew increasingly stronger, avoiding mannerism and any obsequiousness to trends. The “contaminatio” - typical of the present culture - became visible. His recent work (2001) is an example of this mixture, spiral elements - permeated with sweetness - alternate with others consisting in broken lines, and hence a harder almost impressionist structure within this dichotomy, almost a cruelly symbolic grill, the veiled image of a Christ appears. Hence one can say that nowadays the expressive style pursued by Baratto is at least a dual one. On one hand the portrayal - and interpretation - of nature, regarded as material and spiritual life; on the other the allusive emblematic content of actions and interventions. In a painting dated 1983 the artist was inspired by the English demonstartions against a missile base: there is no description of the fact itself, but the symbolism portrays the event. In fact what one can see is some long barbed wire cut with shears: the opened passage is filled with a pattern of coloured wool threads. Then again there are all his works of art on the theme of nature, the most recent in particular characterised by both moodiness and liveliness. In the centre one can see the spiral-shaped figures (defined as abstract), formal but simultaneously symbolic metaphors. Baratto is above all a free artist: at times lyrical, almost ingenuous, rich in fascination; at times devoted to meditate events - and even on life’s dramas. And this underlines his modernity.

Paolo Rizzi - March 2004