Conflicts of contemporaneity in Luis Fracchia's work

Luis Martin Lozano

The visual fact that Luis Fracchia presents in some of his works seems to me to belong to the dimension of true painting, this being understood precisely as the exercise of an intellectual faculty to question reality and take on the challenge of an answer, which, according to the logic of mistake-making, can also succeed as a valid expression. This means, in Fracchia's case, going beyond the simple fiction of being a good painter by trade.

There are two conceptual matters that I discover in his painting that I should like to emphasize: first, that his figuration - very meticulous at times - is not only an easy way to charm the viewer, but by this means he also presents a conflict of the aesthetics of all times: The materiality and spirit of the human figure, confronting the existence of the visual abstraction that refuses to die out as the background of a picture; and secondly, that there is an evident tendency in his work to seek a balance between opposites.

The spectator may not be completely aware of it but, in the backgrounds that serve as a setting for the bodies that he paints, there is an intense work of metaphysical reflection that gradually creates an atmosphere of tension between the figure and the background, either in the neutral tones he uses - which I find slightly gelid and aseptic -, where a quiet battle is being waged between realism and abstraction.

In his paintings, there is a non-abstract moment in which the human figure is shown in extreme detail, and there is a gradual conquering between the painted subject and the natural objects that he commonly carries in his hands; so far, Luis Fracchia has proceeded as a realist painter displaying his trade. But it is in the interaction of the figure with its environment that the artist is able to introduce a stimulating element for the avid eye that criticizes the fiction of its deceptive reality. This is when a second, non-figurative, moment triumphs, in which visual Reason prevails and the painter recreates lighting effects to frame the false silhouette of the figures, and to create scenery for the theater of space.

To my way of thinking, this supposed abstraction is what allows Luis Fracchia to integrate the fragmented reality of the bodies with their contemporary existential condition; man and woman, organic and inorganic, the exposed interior and the exterior adopted.

His works from the Continua and Dives Series show a technical mastery of the figure in space, thanks to the qualities of good drawing; but they also show the dissatisfaction of the intellect that now questions the dynamics of movement and the dialectic between the form, as shown by the body, and the background, which arises as a new central element of great visual force. He uses the balance of naked torsos wisely, with symmetrical bands of sienna red, a tone that personally reminds me of the color palette used by Piero Della Francesca. I find that these pieces have the neutrality of a contemporary classic. There is a paradox here of contemporaneity.