Finding Courage To Face The Deepest Fears

By Zoraida Diaz

In Guanacaste, at the height of summer’s heat, the thirst for verdant hills and the cool sanctuary of a museum become a longed-for non sequitur that signals nature’s renewal and man’s deepest yearning for art — the perennial decoder of civilization.

It is no wonder, this writer has been known — when feeling out-of-synch — to get on a plane to Washington’s National Gallery of Art, for a one hour-long stare at Dali’s The Last Supper, or to New York’s Frick Museum for a soulful rendezvous with three of Vermeer’s 35 known paintings, or more recently to San José for a reencounter with a 17th Century Dutch master whose chiaroscuros have stood the test of almost half a millenia.

It is no wonder, that my recent meeting in Playa Hermosa with Italian painter Enrico Visani resulted on an encounter that took on the metaphysical form of a glass of cool water quenching the familiar summer thirst.

Arriving in the last light of day, Visani (70), greets me with the boundless energy of a bon vivant. I’m eager to see his work.

His most recent work entitled “La Metafisica (Playa Hermosa),” a two meter by two meter canvas is carried out by his friends into the parking lot of the hotel he once owned. Held by Visani, and framed by the tree canopy above, the painting draws the dwindling light onto itself: it is an omniscient view of Playa Hermosa with faceless mannequins that pose for the painter — as if for a portrait.

Visani first discovered Costa Rica in 1990, finding his “paradise,” and for 15 years he divided his life between Bologna and Playa Hermosa.

“This place (Bosque del Mar) which I once owned, has a beauty I have found nowhere else.”

The painting is a tribute to Playa Hermosa and a celebration of the life of his friend and mentor Georgio di Chirico, founder of the Metaphysical Movement and precursor of Surrealism in the first quarter of the 20th Century.

“This painting is important,” he confides, “I hadn’t painted with such passion in 25 years.”

Visani’s painting is a version of the 1985 work La Metafísica nel giardin. In the Playa Hermosa ode, a winding road leads to an overpowering sea, while the original work evokes the refined aesthetics of an Italian garden enclosed by cypresses and marble sculptures.

Visani follows in the artistic tradition of the city of his birth, Florence, mecca of the Renaissance that gave the world painters of the stature of Michelangelo, Giotto and Da Vinci. Schooled by the art of Afro Basaldella, Francis Bacon, De Kooning and Graham Sutherland, Visani became a painter out of sheer necessity.

Born to hardship, Visani apprenticed as a pastry chef, rising through the ranks covered in flour and kneading Herculean strength into his fingers.

“I had the good fortune of being born to paint,” he says, admitting he gambled on art only after his 30th birthday.

This visceral conviction compelled him to transcend the life that had been set for him. He experimented late at night using leftover wall paint that had been left at the bakery.

It took over him.

© Zoraida Diaz

“Color is something you have inside of you,” he said once in an interview with Italian critic Giuliano Serafini, “I am not referring to inspiration, to the ‘muse’…what counts more is the debate, confrontation, challenge created between me and that white canvas.

“I might stay as long as two days in front of it without doing anything,” he adds.

Art, according to Visani, is working up the courage to face one’s deepest fears.

“Working up courage, like the ancient authors of graffiti from Altamira who drew animals in order to propitiate sufficient energy to face them and kill them…”

The magnificent victory of art is the conquering of those fears. Trying or dying in the attempt.
“If instead of reading three to four thousands books in my lifetime, I had chosen instead to play cards I wouldn’t have the head to speak of many things.”

Visani’s love of art in all its forms compelled him to write a book of those “many things” he could speak of with some of the most creative minds of the 20th Century.

He finished his Incontri di Enrico Visani con i grandi maestri del Novecento last year. The book transcribes Visani’s conversations with luminaries of the arts, such as Giorgio De Chirico, Renato Guttuso, Pietro Annigoni, and Alexander Schawinski.

“I am 70 years old. I have had great fortune,” says Visani, “I wrote of the friends I have had.”
Visani acknowledges that fortune has played a heavy hand in his life.

“My first exhibit was in Paris in 1982 — Le Figaro gave me five columns. This is luck,” he says.
“My wife Doña Silvana of 46 years. This is luck.”

“Life is good for living it well!” he shouts, announcing he must pack.

He is catching a few planes to Mount Athos in the Greek Peninsula of Halkidikia where he is to visit some of 20 ancient monasteries.

His intellectual and spiritual crusade will be shared with Umberto Eco, an old friend.

Visani’s metaphysical glass of water is about to be refilled.