I recently became acquainted with the contemporary art of Andrea Benetti, which is housed in numerous museums and private collections and has been showcased at the Venice Art Biennale. I was able to grasp its poetic essence, its powerful communicative force, and its profound admiration for the primordial universe. He is a relentless artist, resolute in his dissent and rejection of the modern world, remarkably lucid in his exaltation of abstràhere as an exemplum vitae, and incisively cynical in his reclamation of the status quo.
Contemplating his works felt like witnessing the release of a latent energy, erupting like a lightning bolt in a feverish kinetic state, where lines, colors, and forms dance across the canvas. His technical conceptions, strengthened by polylobed silhouettes and planar geometric figures, undergo a sort of spontaneous orogenesis: liquefied natural substances—coffee, hibiscus tea, or henna—take center stage in the two-dimensional pictorial space.
Parallel to the abstraction of Kandinsky or the primordial creations of Klee or Miró, Andrea Benetti wields his brush to pronounce the fate of humanity—not a point of no return, but rather a provocative back to the past, not devoid of Dadaist reminiscences. The randomness, the spontaneous transubstantiation of his resins on Plexiglas, flare up like phoenixes into new life; the dissolution of strips soaked in coffee and hibiscus tea enthusiastically welcomes animals, anthropic forms, stars, circles, cars, boats, and airplanes, in a space where three-dimensionality is deliberately excluded.
It is a symphony, not a homophony of colors: outlined by serpentine or ogival contours, the hues, never clashing, respond joyfully to the masterful orchestration of the artist. Bison, eagles, deer, hunters, circles, pentagons, and moons compete greedily for their place on stage, floating in levitation amid labyrinthine and overlapping compositions, occasionally ruptured by impetuous curved secants: spirals, coral-like formations, ammonites, and cochleae regenerate upon the canvas.
Neo-Cave painting: this, declares Andrea Benetti, is humanity’s therapy. The magical-propitiatory symbolism of cave imagery has already revealed, like a Delphic oracle, the path forward. The painting of origins—a Cartesian and eurhythmic pursuit of primordial life, the zealous journey toward purification, the attainment of nirvana: a conditio sine qua non, Benetti’s art seems to proclaim, against the martyrdom of the planet. The ultimate solution, the prophecy of salvation.