Le philtre II 1943

Enrico Donati’s “Le philtre II” is a surreal concoction bubbling up from who knows where! The dominant blue, like deep ocean water, makes you feel like you’re peering into some otherworldly abyss, or maybe a potion? I like to think about the act of painting itself when I look at a piece like this – the trial and error, the intuition, the sheer physicality of pushing paint around. It seems like Donati was in his studio wrestling with the unknown. Like the dripping paint, which is so viscous and alive, this choice feels like a conversation with gravity. You can feel Donati’s hand in it, right? Artists are always in dialogue, riffing off each other across time and space. I think of the surrealists and abstract expressionists. Painting is embodied expression, it embraces the weird, the uncertain, and the multiple possibilities that art can be!