The sunrise has always been for me the most beautiful moment of the day. I remember when as a 13 year old I’d take the 6:32 morning train that went to Florence, where I attended ‘il liceo artistico’ (the high school for the arts) and, after a few minutes, appearing in front of my eyes like a dream, stood the large industrial complex of Stanic (just outside Livorno), made of shadows and magical reflections in every color. In my mind, it was probably from
those moments that my painting developed. I still have a pleasant feeling when waking early and, in the silence of the still-sleeping city, have a coffee and revisit whatever I produced on the canvas the day before.
And then back to work in my home-studio where I appreciate the panorama of the hills of Livorno from the one side, and to the other, the sea…dominated by the old tower of Marzocco.
It’s such a pure emotion that even today I revel in the preparation, swirling my brush with the various materials and colors available to me. In that gesture, there is a particular form of sensuality that takes over.
I remember when a dear friend — a colleague from when I was a professor of painting in Brera (at the Fine Arts Academy) — said to me: “Wouldn’t you do better to execute your first tubular patterns with the use of a computer?” He didn’t understand that my pleasure derives from the difficulty involved with obtaining those hues with a brush, a process where I challenge the technological means so developed in our time. The need to prove something
is probably in my DNA. There must be a hint of that from the Tuscan painters of the 16 th century.
Fabrizio Breschi
