ORLANDO PIRACCINI
Art critic
It has been written that the painted clouds of Giovanna Benzi are subjects/symbolic objects, allegories, metaphors of something that is deeply connected to life, to the heart, to the feeling. For those who report them on the canvas, in short, they are real motions of the soul. If this is the case, the spectator should not limit himself to contemplate these paintings, which must be understood, deciphered, interpreted far beyond the apparent images. It is not a coincidence that it satisfies the author to be aware that some of her admirers have looked at the sky with different eyes since they saw her paintings. It would seem to be a simple joke, but instead it is the most valid critical judgment on the ability of the artist of the clouds to overcome reality until reaching the magical sphere of the invisible. And indeed, these skies are not the same ones that we observe every time we raise our eyes to the sky. There is no naturalism or objectivity in the painting of Giovanna Benzi, which stands outside the traditional and worn out categories of figurative and abstract. These cumulus clouds or cirrus clouds are on an expressive separation from which the painter tries to communicate with the viewer through the translation into imaginary images - what only she can see, and even perceive, as it happens only to the real artists. The instrument she uses is that of visual lyric, suitable for a creative person with a remarkable figurative and also literary culture. Who paints thinking in terms of poetry, and not by chance often accompanies her work with the verses of poets and writers. But Giovanna Benzi is also an explorer of art history. And that is why her clouds come from afar, sometimes from the heaven of the ancient depths or of classicism, from the metaphysical vaults of Piero della Francesca, from the celestial baroque tangles, from the dense atmospheres of romanticism. And there is an impressionistic way that applies to the artist, to capture the fleeting moment of the cloud that furrows the sky, with color and form that change with the variation of light, and acquires its autonomy by binding to the emotion of the painter. So the viewer must be certain: simple clouds are not those painted by Giovanna Benzi.
