La Strada 1956

'La Strada', or 'The Street' if your Italian's a bit rusty, is one of the paintings Renato Guttuso made - we're not sure exactly when - and it's a beautiful mess of oil paint. The way Guttuso attacks the canvas, it's all about the act of painting itself, you know? There's this controlled chaos in the colours. Thick strokes of reds, yellows and greens, sometimes blended, sometimes clashing, it’s like the city itself, beautiful and overwhelming at the same time. Look at the woman in the blue top, her skin rendered in these really short almost staccato strokes of light and dark paint, so expressive. The whole painting has a kind of urgency, like Guttuso is trying to capture the fleeting moment before it slips away, a bit like some of the stuff that the German Expressionists were up to. It reminds us that art isn't about perfection; it's about feeling, about being alive to the chaos around us.