I confess that I accepted the invitation to give a brief testimony for Albino Lucatello, with a certain reluctance, as I do not master words very well. However it seemed dutiful to write these brief notes in homage to the friendship that tied me to him, and because in this way I am offered the opportunity to express my opinion on the form of his message. This is an argument that I have discussed many times with Renzo Viezzi, who so bravely presented him on the catalogue of the Exhibition at the Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice.
I would like to state in advance that my key to understanding Lucatello’s art will certainly not be the only one, since art by its mere nature is ambivalent more than anything.
There is no doubt that Albino loved Friuli– I remember a long walk in the surroundings of Tarcento, where we stopped many times and this made me at the time, somewhat merry and I have never forgotten his enthusiastic comments for the magnificent surrounding countryside – but in my opinion, he was not its’ cantor.
Neither could it have been so, because as he had a conception of nature so intuitively cosmic, he was not inclined to typify his themes in explicit ways.
He felt everything as pure energy: light and matter were – are – for Albino aspects of the same nature.
Only in this way can certain formal solutions be explained, otherwise they would seem disconcerting.
The heavy, enormous mass of the “Musi” reduced to evanescent modulations of light.
The “fields of wheat” dematerialised and suspended with barely allusive, delicate wings.
The green of the fields, of the vegetable gardens, the infinite range of greens of the trees, which fuses in a unique emerald green that they all adopt.
Also the man, so often quoted, is swallowed into everything; dissolved in the panic magma of the vital energy.
These great synthesis exclude a priori precisely every detail, every characterisation; “the Friulianess”.
Nonetheless, they reach a great splendour and are the reconfirmation of the extreme trust that Albino Lucatello had in his means of expressing himself.
Dear Albino, the “Master from Tarcento” (just as Altieri was the “Master from Capriva” and the “Master from Mossa” the undersigned).
In this manner, jokingly, laughing, between one glass the next, chatting about painting and painters, about wine, about politics and about the local cuisine of Friuli.
With him I have lost a friend and a reliable reference point.

translated by Rebecca N. Kay