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This painting depicts a landscape created from the artist’s imagination. The wild and cloudy sky, the ploughed field and the cocks fiercely fluttering upwards lend the work an ominous, almost visionary, quality. The cocks appear to be jostling each other in this upward movement to get as high as possible, closer to the saints, as the title indicates. The expressive use of colour – flaming red and yellow ochre contrasting with pitch black – heightens the dramatic effect. Only the sunlight breaking through, reflected in the flat surface of the water, provides a counterbalance to this tumult. The lower section of the water, however, remains shrouded in darkness. The whole painting reveals the artist’s enraptured sense of life.
© Enzo Cucchi

Makers

Translated title

The Flowering of the Black Cocks / Closer to the Feeling of the Saints

Collection

Other

Production date

1983

Library

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Dimensions

281 x 361.5 x 4.5cm.

Material

oil on canvas

Object number

A 39086