The swimmer (1981) cm 112×84 – Tempera su tela

From the moment it was painted, The Swimmer stands at the center of the room in the Orsi home. Its leaden palette expresses the painter’s state of mind following an accident in which two members of his family lost their lives. The seascape, bristling with sharp rocks, represents the theater of the tragedy: the coast of Mulinetti, a town not far from Bonassola, a place where the artist spent much of his free time from the late sixties. The muscular figure of the swimmer is reminiscent of the castaways in Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa. The gesture of the hand, whose index finger points toward the seabed, indicates the fatal outcome of the event. Free of dramatic tones, the painting transfigures the event in a symbolic and meditative key. This calmness is the fruit of the elaboration of the mourning. Orsi makes his own the Dechirican expedient of transforming characters and moments of private life in a metaphysical key, leaving out the narration to make room for reflection. The sea is a recurring theme in Orsi’s painting, especially since the seventies. The Swimmers are the only series in which, in the seascape, the human figure appears. The uniqueness of the Swimmer compared to Orsi’s repertoire is the content linked to the desolation left by death: if in his Danza Macabra it is mocked and defeated, here it is unavoidable. Whoever observes the painting without knowing its story is not disturbed by the drama concealed in it, but perceives it anyway in a subliminal way.