Augusto Baratto’s work of art can be connected with the typical experience of the Venetian landscape painting, which flourished from distant ages in many different ways. Sinking its roots in the natural sap which flows in the fields of the slight slopes, in the trees along the river, on the breathing roofs of the houses, in the red rose sprays climbing the windows, in the purple rain of the wisteria in the corners of the village. Nature is the inspirer, merry and glowing with colours and sensations, made for an open, optimistic and rich in inspiration disposition, as is our artist. He considers paintings as a manifestation of his own instinct, or as the direct translation of his feeling before things. He needs to work in open space, to place his easel near the vineyards, looking at the cornfields waiting for “the moment of grace”, the happy intuition that finally arrives. In his canvas there is no room for wild suppositions, for the slow suffering of whom who looks for without finding; but there is space for the impulse of extemporization without real or artificial problems, for the most free spontaneity towards the boundaries of non-objectiveness. Natural reality is seen in all its aspects, from the stem of a flower to the sunny lowland in the background, thick with moods and coloured lights which spread from farmhouse to farmhouse. The theme of landscape, represented as vital explosion, is continually recurring, and is always able to find its ways: the brushes are compliant tools in the hands of our painter, who shows he is able to dominate the matter, and to compel the radiant beauty of reality to show itself inside the painting, always respecting the harmony of the colours, the tonal scansion, and the balance of composition. It is not difficult to recognize the pleasant strokes of the brush à là Matisse o à là Marquet, as it is not difficult to understand the strength of a fervent immagination, and the releasing of images from every descriptive and anecdotal excess.

Angelo Simonato