The Horn of Africa

Work sheet

The Horn of Africa · work code TT72

Technical data

year2023
purchase dateacquired in the portfolio
estimated current value in €consult the updated Price Table
identification of the subjectabstract painting/reconstructivist work
materials and techniquesoil on canvas/mixed media/material work
measurements in centimeters cm80 x 60 x 1,8
inscriptionssignature
inscription techniqueoil
inscription positionon the back/bottom/right
transcriptionValvo
authenticity certificateissued at the same time as the sale
art multiplesno print issued
state of conservationintact work
location of the workRome · Italy
copyright© all rights reserved · global · S.I.A.E.

High definition image of the work (enlargeable)

Click on the image of the work to enlarge on the Flickr photographic platform (recommended viewing on a PC screen) ⚠️© Copyright: all rights reserved · S.I.A.E. · Any type of use is prohibited.

The image is watermarked with the site logo

Raisuli Oimar Tancredi Valvo · Il Corno d'Africa ·  2023 · Picture 0 · © All rights reserved S.I.A.E.
The Horn of Africa · work code TT72

Description of work

The Horn of Africa

Famine, drought, the after-effects of European colonization, internal clashes, the Somali-Ethiopian war, political instability. Legions of humans struggling to survive every single day.
It is precisely in the denunciation of the state of things, in the dryness and aridity of an almost infertile land without water, in the struggle to survive and in the escape from blind violence that this canvas finds its apodictic meaning.
The work has a concentric structure and is characterized by a generally lucid and cold vision. The restless observation of the present.
The pictorial morphology of this work is twofold: three-dimensional on the one hand, aerial and exquisitely two-dimensional on the other.
In agreement with the first of the two interpretations, that is the three-dimensional one, we note how the work, in the central part, literally tends to sink inwards. To collapse on itself. The abyss. A perspective tunnel in which everything is absorbed, without exceptions whatsoever. A black hole that sucks everything around it. An endless well. A ravine. Total emptiness. The unknown.
The structural elements, that is graphic symbols, circles, quadratures, lines tangled on themselves, stylized or otherwise serpent-like images, present promiscuously in the peripheral area of the canvas, gradually lose grip, detaching themselves from their reference plane and catapulting themselves towards oblivion. Even the sand-colored material encrustation, present in the right half of the work, seems to be affected by this irrefutable attraction, magnetically sucked towards nothingness.
At the same time the painting presents a strictly reconstructivist and, therefore, two-dimensional connotation, according to which we perceive the pictorial plane as a flat surface observed from a perspective that we could define as aerial. Warm tones loom all around, surrounding the central element with a deconstructed appearance: it seems like observing the dehydrated carcass of a decomposed bovine in the middle of the desert.
Diagonal and thin lines, in black, emphasize, in strong contrast with the underlying shades and by means of a pronounced obliquity, the concentric directionality of the structure.
Our eye, in both cases, is always led to contextualise the work in real time, at the first visual impact, and then slide towards the central point, sloping towards the exact intersection of the diagonals of the canvas.
The work has an autobiographical character, relating to the author’s past period of stay in the regions of central Africa, in the last decade of the twentieth century. The artist treasured these experiences and all these visions and perceptions, elaborating them for a long time and re-proposing them, now mature, decades later.
This painting has an underlying drama. It’s undeniable. At the same time, it expresses the desert as a subject in a simple and direct way, a theme very dear to Valvo.

Other images of the work

(selecting an image will open the photo gallery for this work)

Catalog of works

(Selecting an image will take you to the Catalog of works section)