The Permanent Gaze
Elio Armano
In a world where painting has been off the walls for centuries and has lost its social function, painters, if we can still call them that, have become increasingly lonely…
Living and working in Venice – where there is everything and that continues to host everything in an endless programme – is even more difficult. Apart from a few great figures, the only option is the long, tenacious path of monastic work, decade after decade.
This is what comes to mind when looking at Luciana Cicogna’s paintings, from the happy days of encounters and discoveries at a vibrant academy, such as the one under the Gallerie. Luciana has continued her work regardless of fashions and conventions, as have many of her colleagues. She has not been overcome by fatigue or intimidated by the easy and predictable successes of others. Working in her studio, she has “painted” and thought about miles of surfaces, while showing little of her daily struggle.
Now, not in a gallery, usually a place of hedonism and commerce, but in a small and courageous cultural space, she exhibits her eyes/glasses/machines of vision, ancient but still relevant tools, without which we could understand nothing of the infinite spectacle that nature gives us, even if tragedies that seemed to belong to the past have returned around us.
May 2025
