"Venus de Luglio" is a four handed piece I made in collaboration with the artist Giulia Greco in the summer of 2021. My idea was to make a piece that evokes a sort of renaissance, a sort of spring and garden of Eden we are all hoping for to retrieve after this hard times we have been going through because of the corona virus pandemic. I meet Giulia in Fisciano, it's a little town of the Campania region of Italy that has the particularity to be very vibrant because of the immense University of Salerno that brings thousands of students, life and creativity through some artists common friends. Giulia is more inclined to pottery but she's a very creative and willing to work seriously on an artistic proyect and this piece proves it.
I painted the central figure of Venus and directed the composition efforts in a mix of spontaneous and improvised "garden" of colors and shapes with a very controlled idea of distribution of weight of elements and color. It is very hard to achieve a proper coherent composition whilst working with another artist but this piece came out very nice and effective because there was a great feeling of empathy and even love between us when we painted it together. This is a warm and light full piece that meant a break from my usual social and political heavy and serious subjects that seams and looks light even though there are uncountable hours of work on it. The title translates to "July's Venus" and at that time the collaborating hand of Giulia felt like she was my fruit bearing Venus of life in a very hard world.
