SPIRIT OF AN ARTIST

Arioso 5 An artist by definition must be a free spirit, free from the yoke of necessity, a being able to play with serious business of every day living and then always able to fly, to grasp what maybe others are only able to glimpse. A pure and fresh spirit like that of a child, a very receptive and inquisitive being, always animated by the desire to know and to learn, but also willing and generous in the offering of himself. A spirit which comes from a constant perfectioning, upon which meditation and existential pain has worked as a chisel, smoothing over any rough edges and voids, creating a work of art of his inner being, making a special, noble spirit from a common man.

Luminoso Man like this do exist, artists in name and deeds, one meets once in a lifetime, and this is the case of Sergio Zen.

Zen works in a studio situated amongst the rocky slopes of Valdagno, an isolated place, which lends itself to reflection and introspection. His way of acting, his gestures, his works, immediately reveal his open, radiant personality, not enbittered by the maliciousness of humanity, whilst his inner being seems to light up with contact from the outside world: providing infinite intensely poetic situations which he then transforms in his paintings. We are not talking about simple psycology, about psycological literature on works of art, but about recognizing painting which comes from an act of generousity towards the world and not only the self-affirmation of ego. His attitude towards others one can also see through his organisation of the choice of expression, in supplying himself with a sign language as gestures, and the areas of space-colour interpreted by emanations, effusions of regenerated energy.

That everything is a manifestation of energy, is reconfirmed by his instance on the poetics of colours: "colour as a pure emotion" (S. Zen), lives within the artist and reality becomes circumstance, the stimolous for creative translations from the intense, inner life. Painting in Zen is born above anything else from an overwhelmning passion, from a desire to act, rather than contemplate, communicate. There is no detachment. In fact his paintings capture you and take you into the picture or they give themselves to our sensibilities like rivers overflowing onto parched earth. The fluidity of the paintings seems continuously renewed by an everlsting source, and leaves an active, vibrant substance on the canvas, radiating emotion. Hence, the formal choice of surfaces are superimposed layared or slide; the texture indicates space, and acted upon space; the intervention of units rests light and aerial, rithmic touches which at times are markedly lirical. Every paiting sets our minds and hearts a light, aeleiminating the external internal unrelatedness, the barriers, he boundaries, the hierarchy of that which is below and that which is above: profondly penetrating his spirit and ours without frightening us, but rather enriching us with an authentic sensorial experience.