Lucatello wrote in the catalogue of
his one–man show at Venice in 1976, after the earthquake,
that artists must be reborn every second of their life. Later
he insisted that “man is such when he succeeds in reinventing
himself forever”. Now there are two studios; one at Brazzacco
and one at Treppo Grande, both in small villages in the hills
north of Udine: he restarted painting. During this long period
of forced inaction the artist has accumulated energy and he
defines in his mind the paths that he wants to follow with the
usual impetuousness. They are trends which overlap, but which
remain completely independent of one another. The first one
that we are going to consider is his very original interpretation
of nudity. Eroticism is the answer that the earth gives itself
in the light of the tragedy that had devastated it. The woman
nude breaks down into hills under the changing light. He paints
butterflies in oils, or in black or coloured Indian ink on paper:
the butterflies transform themselves into females vulvae. Instead,
the mulberry bushes are born as a movement between the obstacles
and these thick ungainly, lopped trees. The male members are
born from the mulberry bushes, from the trees of life. As Gabriella
Brussich said “each phase of his artistic progression justifies
the previous and is justified by the next”.
