Luciano Viotti, Painter

Luciano Viotti is another of the artists I enjoy down on Via San Lorenzo. 

He has a big soul and you see it in his work.  I loved this one yesterday, of the trams over in Milano. 

He explains that he has been painting for more than thirty years.  He began with realism, then pointillism but today finds him expressing himself in a personalized Impressionism.  I love it.  Karla insists that you can find the 1950s in his work but it’s something you would have to see for yourself.

You can find more of his work over on his website.

Amedeo Baldovino's Artwork

Today I was gifted a second beautiful painting ... painted just for me. 
Look closely, you’ll see.

I love this city. 
I love the people here, and already I’m thinking about the fact that it will be my suitcase rolling along the caruggi here in a few days.  I will take some exquisite memories when I leave ... as always.

Anyway, about the photograph of the painting below.  It was painted by one of my favourite artists in the world, Amedeo Baldovino.  You can read of my first meetings with him over here.

Tonight I had the pleasure of having dinner with both Amedeo and Karla. I do adore them.

Mille grazie, Amedeo!  I love the painting.  I love that in those Genovese cityscapes you paint, there is a space for this New Zealand photographer who is passionate about books.

Lovin Genova

I think this photograph says it all today ...  it’s a glorious day here in Genova.  Blue skies, not to cold, lots of lovely people.

But more on the people who operate behind the window in the photograph.  Lovin Genova provides people with all the information they could need when wandering in Genova. They have two offices, one down near the pirate ship parked in the harbour, close to the aquarium and another up on Via Garibaldi.  Their English publications are superb and I can’t recommend them highly enough.

Ciao from La Superba

Karla Verdugo, Artist

I met Karla Verdugo back in July, on my previous visit to Genova. 

Karla’s one of a group of artists who sell their artworks down on Via San Lorenzo, on Saturdays and Sundays.  I adore them.  They’re the loveliest people.  If passing, you really should stop and chat and consider their artworks.

Today Karla gifted me an early Christmas gift.  It was one of two paintings I wanted to buy from her and it’s going to make me smile everytime I look at it.  Not only because I love it and it’s a gift from a lovely friend but because I consumed a whole jar of honey on this visit. It was my drug of choice when it came to fighting this cold of mine. 

It shall be hung someplace close to my desk.
Grazie, Karla.

Yasmina Khadra ... aka Mohamed Moulessehoul, Writer

What to keep of all these reels of film, what to throw away? If we could only take 1 memory on our journey, what would we choose? At the expense of what or whom? And most importantly, how to choose among all these shadows, all these spectres, all these titans? Who are we, when all is said and done? Are we the people we once were or the people we wish we had been? Are we the pain we caused others or the pain we suffered at the hands of others? The encounters we missed or those fortuitous meetings that changed the course of our destiny? Our time behind the scenes that saved us form our vanity or the moment in the limelight that warmed us? We are all of these things, we are the whole life that we have lived, its highs and lows, its fortunes and its hardships, we are the sum of the ghosts that haunt us… we are a host of characters in one, so convincing in every role we played that it is impossible for us to tell who we really were, who we have become, who we will be.
― Yasmina Khadra, What the Day Owes the Night

Tonight, I had the pleasure of attending a talk given by Yasmina Khadra ... aka Mohamed Moulessehoul.

Mohamed was an officer in the Algerian army, a man who was forced to adopt a woman’s pseudonym to avoid military censorship as the writer he was. Despite the publication of many successful novels in Algeria, Moulessehoul only revealed his true identity in 2001 after leaving the army and going into exile and seclusion in France.

It was fascinating, despite being in French and Italian.  Sometimes that just leaves a person free to watch and examine body language and location, and the people around them.

It was held in Genova’s exquisite Palazzo Ducale ...

It was an enjoyable interlude.

And yes ... I regret not taking my camera but I was running late.