The venetian horizon of Augusto Baratto Overwhelmed by a wave of abstract experimentations, some of them luckily positive, others in the sign of superficiality and dilettantism, we were impatient to meet a good way of painting, able to carry on the discourse and the tradition of the “Venetian School”. Absences and long silences made us worry about the danger of loosing a cultural heritage which goes over the regional borders. And here the proposal of Augusto Baratto, who presents a personal exhibition at the San Vidal Paintings, in Venice - an important meeting point for many Venetian maestros - the painter runs through the Venetian countryside using tones that are longing and rich in poetry. Baratto feels that he is part of the school of Nando Coletti and Gino Rossi, Disertori and maestros between the two world wars. The figurative choice is the necessary way to give a greater plasticity to the sweet slopes of the Euganean hills, to the lowland “broken” by the villages dominated by the bell towers shaped like points of pencils, which for the inhabitants are still places of deep religious significance. Baratto’s tale becomes deep and insightful when he tries to expand the “Vandea” to horizons without boundaries. The green - symbol of life - dominates, spotted with yellow ochre and pink, the colours of the land. He breaths profounly this humus; he becomes its singer, with other painters of villages which are at the doors of the “serenissima” city, always maintaining the characteristics of the deep Veneto. The school of Noale is one of the most interesting new scenarios of the Venetian painting in the last decades.

Alberto Di Graci