Sery’s colours
I have already written about Sery (Serafina Colombo) on the occasion of one of her exhibitions in Spain where the Lombard painter displayed her meadows dotted with poppies in bright watercolours that recall the freshness of some of the great Monet's springs. Sery is a spontaneous painter, attracted to natural phenomena, the change of seasons, the hot summer holidays and the long winters of the Po valley where Sery lives, in Arluno, with that happiness that is granted to her by her young age and a good family.
But today Sery is presenting herself, with her complete works in Arluno, her town, her world. She asks the elderly critic for a guarantee, which I do not give so easily.
I shun texts of false literature that correspond to the opacity of conscience, I call spade a spade, in all honesty. Therefore I will not make literature on Serafina Colombo’s oeuvre, she does not deserve it and she is not expecting the “master’s” viaticum.
I will only say that in the vast production, good, mediocre, dreadful, of the artists of these years, Sery stands out for her personality which goes beyond the contingent and faces a wider valuation.
Sery is a painter who does not want to amaze, who does not rely on the rhetorical literature of nature, the fertile fields, the discolouring colour of naturalistic visions. She does not have a background of prepared literature that admits her to the large mass of contemporary tendencies. I believe that Sery is a born artist, I have written it and I have no reason to contradict myself.
I reconfirm that Sery's spontaneous and enthusiastic naturalism is extremely valid and that this painter can hold her head high before a qualified public with her entire oeuvre born from the contemplation of nature and a now thorough care in representing it with artistic means. Meanwhile Sery does not rely, as it is custom, on the market of tendencies. Out and about we see very unqualified exhibitions that meet the approval of degenerate critics. Sery is still far from a false and commercialised debate but this does not mean that she has the mental openness and the culture to enter with full credentials the communal assembly of arts with this beautiful and meaningful exhibition.
No symbols and mythology will be seen but a clear and passionate adhesion to painting nature as it is.
I refer you, without presumptions, to my previous writing about Sery to substantiate this.
Raffaele De Grada - February 1993
On the occasion of a personal exhibition in Milan
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