The paintings of Franco Magnani, a San Francisco artist, demonstrate his remarkable memory for his childhood village of Pontito, Italy. Here, one of his paintings of Pontito, top, is juxtaposed with an actual photograph of the village. Magnani left the village in 1958 in his mid-20s. Eight years later, during a serious illness, he began dreaming about Pontito in extraordinarily vivid detail. Soon the images came to him during the daytime with almost hallucinatory power. Impulsively, and working entirely from memory, he began painting and drawing different scenes of the village. Although some of his works show near-photographic accuracy, many contain distortions that serve to portray the village in an idyllic light.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:32:20 +0000