Gilberto Grilli

Virtual chromatics

I came to know Davide’s works through a painting I chanced upon on the internet, “L’ARRIVO”: in this work I saw depicted my youthful passion, the conviction that before dying someone would come to collect us in a spaceship, to spare us earthly death. A kind of saving abduction, real, not religious or spiritual.

The work is extraordinarily painted, and I fell in love with it at once. Then, little by little, I discovered other canvases painted by Cristofaro, and I realised that this young man has the gift of visual memory, of draughtsmanship, and of a command of colour. I must say that for his age he often hits the mark, giving us works that bring together “Beauty, Expressiveness, Colour” in a truly disarming and fascinating blend.

One example of this are the portraits of beautiful ordinary girls or of famous actresses, which Davide handles on the canvas like a conjuror, until he draws out of the composition a harmony of composition and colour that is truly rare.

He, like other young people who have seen the restored Sistine Chapel, has strengthened his colours, to the point of rediscovering the living and immortal Michelangelo with the true colours he used in his day. Great masters such as Annigoni, by contrast, were visually formed by the sight of the Sistine still blackened and veiled by smoke of various origins, and in their work the monotone, the leaden, holds sway, without the high notes of colour that some young artists after the ’90s use like tenors.

I have seen Davide’s work “in progress” on some paintings of faces, and it is incredible how he manages to give the picture an almost “cinematic” quality: by the third layer the work could already be considered finished, like a frame of film, yet he goes further, without forcing anything, simply introducing into the canvas beautiful colours that are so alive and vivid that they give us a sense of chromatic power typical of computer art, with the substantial difference that Davide paints: he uses no technological tricks, but work, a great deal of work, a discipline that many young artists today will not even consider.

Cristofaro always starts from a drawn base, with great patience and humility: this is the key to achieving excellent results in the craft he has chosen.

Dear Davide, I wish you to keep this energy for many years, and never to feel you have arrived: that is where your fall would begin.