The smallest paintings in the world

Emotions in paintings

THE SMALLEST PAINTINGS IN THE WORLD

Stefano Busonero

The official homologation issued in the famous Guinness Book of Records (Italian Edition 1996, page 186) awards his long activity of a great pictorial engagement through which he, step by step, came in the year 1997, to present others microscopic paintings, succeeding in doing a microscopic paintings the size of which are 0.25 mm of diameter (0.049 mmq.) as in the case of the painting representing the face of Oliver Hardy made inside the cavity of a syringe needle or a marine landscape painted in the eye of a small tailor's needle. Busonero has created such an artistic current (or tendency) as a provocation in order to demonstrate that the art of painting, besides not having pre-established limitations with regard to the style is not subjected to spatial boundary. On looking at these paintings, which, if observed by naked eyes, are nothing but little points, or little more, the observer is at a loss because he see almost nothing but the artist, in order to avoid such a disappointment to the observers, has thought to accompany his micropaintings with photoes adequately enlarged so everybody can immediately appreciate those paintings in front of which no one can be insensible.

What is astonishing is the fact that such very small pictures are well defined, even in their details, keeping intact the quality and perfection of larger paintings. The artist's ability to operate in the field of the infinitely small, a virtue which comes to him from his uncommon skill and patience which have stimulated the interest and also the curiosity of modern means of communications, so that the artist has repeatedly been invited to show his canvas in successful TV programmes and some newspapers of great circulation have positively spoken about him and his works.

His painting is mainly figurative, espressing a way of feeling, a conscious certainty of objects and nature, an unsuppressible need to represent the reality as it is on the base of the impressionistic tradition from which he has developed his personal evolution. But the artist sometimes abandon himself to the fascination of accurately reproducing some famous works created by the Paris School Masters to give them back the due appreciation and, at the same time, carrying a reverent challenge on the ground of the pure technical virtuosity which is carried on molecular dimension to which civilisation and science continually refer nowadays. The chief elements in this works are light and well balanced colours the optics syntesy of which proceed in a rationasl way offering to the observer an immediate enjoyment. This does not mean that his painting is static and repetitive, on the contrary there is a continuous and - I dare say - obsessing research of new chromatic approaching and of new techniques which denote great maturity and sensibility. The demon who always pushes him to go beyond, forces him to frequent reflective crises which are inevitably followed by a pause of meditation from which new ideas and vital lymph comes to his mind.

How far in the time, even if they are tied up among them by a logical evolutive connection, seems to be the first period portraitist or the time of large size pictures characterized by marines, countryside of Maremma and the cycle of the original and fine painted geographical maps which were esteemed so good to be considered worth being printed.. Busonero is also willing to propose some works of his painted on already used Telephonic cards which are the result of a preceding creative experience, besides several studies in wich he reproduces some works by famous masters of Impressionis.