Fulvio Testa: Recent Watercolors

FU L V I O T E S TA : R ECENT WORKS By Karen Wilkin

Anyone familiar with Fulvio Testa’s enchanting picture books or his meticulous, whimsical illustrations for such children’s classics as Aesop’s Fables and Pinocchio , could be forgiven for thinking that the Fulvio Testa who paints loosely stained images evocative of enigmatic landscapes is a completely different individual, with the same name as the distinguished book artist. In fact, the two are one person, complementary halves of an abundantly gifted painter and draftsman who, not surprisingly, given his double practice and double persona, has long divided his time between Italy and New York. Yet longer acquaintance with Testa’s two bodies of work suggests that they are less different than might first be assumed. Not only do his illustrations and his “independent” paintings share an otherworldly, tender, suggestive palette, but his poetic, allusive, watercolor “landscapes”—for lack of a better word—are informed by the same free-wheeling imagination and rich sense of invention that allow him to bring to life the implications of familiar texts in fresh ways or to present a narrative by means of images alone. And like his illustrations, Testa’s landscapes hold our attention by revealing more and more complex visual incidents, calling up more and more associations, the longer we spend with them.