It would certainly be a serious mistake not to talk about Brigitta Rossetti’s artwork, not viewing her artwork and not understanding its evocative power and wisdom would certainly be a harsh loss which would not be easily compensated. Not only for what we would be missing but also for that we would have to suffer in exchange of the useless, of the pretentious and of the unrealistic.

Brigitta Rossetti is a very creative artist and poet, an incomparable inventor for herself and for others and who I can easily imagine solitary in a vast snowy countryside setting out towards the hill where her ark is located, a warm place in which to rest, take refuge, and continuing painting dreams, inhabited with winged figures flying towards faraway worlds; over a parched, stony, and marbled land.

Now, one of the aims of Brigitta Rossetti’s art is to represent not that which is outside or beyond reality but the part of reality that is sleeping inside of us. A ghost, a desire, an instant of happiness or of terror, a joy, an agony. I compare Rossetti to a playful Mirò. She is mindful of desires and of joy, with her light and fluid touch; thus provided with an inclination to fairytales, as a safe territory, a getaway, but without too many illusions.

I see in her works a world which finds its own reasons in itself, without having to illustrate anything. What surprises me in this sublime artist is that her stories are not stories as if there was no text to illustrate, a story, but the sequence of the imagery seems to allude to a text, to a famous and recognizable event. There is none. It is just pure imagination called upon to build events which allude to a story.

There is no dream, in Rossetti, but the invention of that dream, and this is what makes her different, and naturally new, compared to those teachers whom she has observed so many times. It is as if she regards her paintings as being illustrations for an imaginary calendar of dreams, a character for each night and a night for each character. Dreams that never came true, perhaps never even been dreamt. There is always a story being told while painting. And the story is born beneath her hand gradually as she paints. During the course of the story she comes upon elements of reference which she acquires and then goes beyond and develops. But to save the magic and the tension of the story, she always leaves to the spectators the possibility of integrating, in their own way, the elements which she presents to them. Brigitta Rossetti has perfectly understood that art can merely suggest and sometimes develop that which has been expressed already. That which becomes allegory in others, in her is mundane. There is no symbolism in dreams. There is a parallel world, perfectly interchangeable with ours. And if giving the key to our dreams is impossible, it is possible however, through constant representations, to provide at least a glimpse. We are called to look through this glimpse and we see a rapid sequence of some still photos which, in their various themes, repeat themselves in character, in the style of space, like in a fixed backdrop. Recognizable aspects emerge as dreamlike and almost musical memories of a journey taken inside the memory of journeys, in a Freudian process applied to painting. Brigitta Rossetti’s journey is one towards whichever East: a “within” which is found within painting. There is nothing descriptive or anecdotal in her. Her aim is to represent the essences. If these constantly keep on escaping, painting constantly keeps on pursuing them, moving on endlessly and, as consequence, shifting the picture.


Andrea Diprè - Art critic and television presenter