“Colors carved in the wind”

Alessandro Poma -Selfportrait

The colors of the pastel shades, I have always traced the curves of living in a low voice, the beat of the confession, the border with the chiaroscuro of the soul, even more than with the invasion of the oil or certain tempera, not to mention the rugged bark of acrylics. That's how I always read the pastels of Degas and Severini, but above all, so I always read my love for the veil of light and colors with which Odilon Redon knew  to wrap the charm of his visions, as if he would defend  them from the 'assault of his obsessive nocturnal disturbances.

With this background, I found myself on the images of Alexander Poma at a presentation of his works in the exhibition hall of the Municipality of Courmayeur in December 2005.

Alessandro Poma is the emblematic portrait of the artist shy and solitary; scion of a wealthy family Biella, weaves a relationship with the art of aristocratic introspection.

Patch of yellow red flower and foliage
55x76 tecnica mista

And here, among views of snow-covered peaks, among camber of flowery meadows and abandoned huts, picks up the colors blown by the intangible breath of the wind and transforms them into beautiful images of enchantment. Flowers: daisies on the side of the spring, rhododendrons unfolded in a gust of air, the thrill of a blue butterfly that sits above the solitude of the mountains.

Rhododrendon and Mont Blanc
26x45 pastel on paper

Horses and cattle at Maccarese (Fiumicino)
25x32 pastel on paper

Alessandro Poma goes across the artistic movements of the  end of the century and always remaining consistent with his convictions nature, the sign of Delleani, of whom he was a student, accompanies him throughout his artistic and poetic journey into the construction of its exclusive world of colors and shades recorded in the wind and the secrets of the most remote visions of the soul.

Today, half a century after his death, Alessandro Poma is proposed to the attention of critics through the efforts of his nephew Lodovico Berardi who is promoting the right positioning for the painter's art in the history of Italian art of the last century.
And for those who want to know more, we recommend the thorough reading of the monograph edited by his nephew Lodovico Berardi and published by Polistampa in Florence in 2010.

Biography

The Alfa of Alessandro Poma is in Biella Piazzo, February 22, 1874, the Omega in Courmayeur, 11 October 1960. The remaining letters of the alphabet see him in Turin and Rome, in Piano di Sorrento and, of course, a bit 'here and there to Italy where he exhibited his works: the Promoter of Fine Arts in Turin (1996, 1897, 1898, 1900) in Venice at the International Exposition (1903), in Rome at the International Exhibition of Fine Arts of Lovers and Connoisseurs Society (1905), Milan at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts (1906) ... and then Latina, Naples, Palermo, of course in Val d'Aosta, where he spent the last years of his life.

Pass in the snow
28x38 pastel on paper

Autum
40x70 pastel on paper

Praises

Significant is the comparison between his constant hard work, always addressed to research, without quieten in the habit of his craft or surrender in the mannerism, the shy and haughty isolation in which voluntarily he closed himself in the last decades of his long life
Bruno Molajoli

Alessandro Poma is one of the most genuine painters of landscape, which he interpreted in the most diverse chromatic symphonies ...
Cecilia Dangers Ridolfini

The deep love of nature, is the common thread underlying its many crayons
Virginia Bertone

His painting, measured but dynamic in the compositional shapes, sensitive and emotional in the stretch, vibrating in  the use now sober and now full of color, has moments of extraordinary intensity ..
Maurizio Calvesi

The pastels seem to light up of sudden flashes , bud burst in the air, epiphanies of light and colors
Pier Andrea de Rosa