PART FOUR

In the late 1964, Balsamo became a

father for the second time. His second son Francesco is born. Too many wonderful things are happening in his life. Business is good. Children are healthy. The family is secured. His fame is blooming. He is exhibiting worldwide. What else could he expect? Momentino!! He is not expecting a thing. His wife is!! A third child is on his way. Balsamo becomes a father for the third time with a lovely beautiful girl named Antonella! Well, everything is fine now. Life seems to shine over the shoulder of Balsamo. Mrs. Balsamo is proud of her husband. The maestro is in full gear. The three bambini are happy, they are too little to worry about life and frankly they care less…

With the beginning of 1965-1966, Balsamo’s style commenced to acquire a different plane, a multi-complex definition, an intricate complexity in compositions, interpretation and extra-dimensional structure. More vivid and vibrant colors began to infiltrate his palette and through an immense presence of wealth and rebellious strokes of light, multi-layered tones of shades and most visibly, an unlimited themes treatment with lyrical conceptual visualization and lyrical intellect conquered the landscape of his canvases.

q1991. Balsamo with Venturoli, Torti, Ala and Vangelli at the Gradiva Gallery in Rome.

This giant metamorphosis transmigrated Balsamo to a higher and a much more challenging aesthetic standard and quest for supreme perfection and harmony between the seen and the felt, the visible and the unexpected, the pure elementary shadows of beauty and sophisticated rebellious cubist compositions…a new vision of a parallel word of untouched and unexplored artistic dimensions began to haunt Balsamo, to challenge his reality, to delightfully confuse our intelligence and finally to mesmerize us and tease us with scenes depicted from romantically and nostalgically crafted forms and suggestions, all within the world of Balsamo…sometimes, it is a country landscape, an Italian hill, a forgotten narrow village street, some other time, it is a world within a world nicknamed by Balsamo as “Romantic World” or “Romantic Atmosphere”, and more than once, Balsamo hits us with his magic rod and sink us in an ocean of magic and a tempest of one million colors, visions and compositions he grouped under “GRANDE COMPOSIZIONE”, the “Great Composition”.

This magical metamorphosis will continue throughout the years. His style becomes more expressive, more complex, yet it comes closer and closer to our heart and our soul. His style did not change. The expression did and this is how art acquires wisdom, maturity, definition and a place in our imagination, fear, joy, hope, anxiety, struggle, fights, perseverance and love for beauty. The art of Balsamo is big, bigger than the universe we know, the universe that we doubt sometimes, the universe that captivates us and scares us.

So is the art of Balsamo. It is captivating, beautiful, warm, affectionate, blooming. But, those are the attributes of danger. But, who did say that art is safe? That art is tranquil? That art is holy and sacred? That art is comforting? Did Gods talk to us? Did the creator of the universe reveal the intimacy and secret of his strength and creation? If not, so do not expect the art of Balsamo to be safe and simply entertaining, because Balsamo art is a blend of the divine secrets of beauty, magic, danger, creativity, the real, the unreal and beyond…For the Art of Balsamo is above us…For the art of Balsamo is so close to the creator of the universe…For the art of Balsamo shelters the known and the unknown, the visible and the hidden, the real and the phantasmagoric…

It is an art where the mind, the soul and the mortal flesh meet and rejoice, because in the inner and outer limits of Balsamo art, you breath freedom, beauty, magic, fantasy, colors and colors and colors and what colors do not tell us…Friends, do not tell me that Art is made by mortal humans…Do not tell me that art is created by hands, fingers and brushes and metallic tubes containing colors and chemicals…Do not try to tell me this, if I am still looking at Balsamo paintings.

How could alone an aluminum tube of colors produce such a majestic beauty…How could a piece of wood, a brush with animal or plastic hair create such marvelous hills, prairies and houses on the face of linens…How could a flesh…How could mortal hands immortalize the mind, the soul, the beauty, the visions, the dreams and the worlds within worlds on a canvases, if art was only a human medium. I do not believe in that, because I saw the art of Balsamo!! It is much more than that…For the art of Balsamo transcends us through time, space, unknown regions of our mind and soft landscape of our heart.The art of Balsamo is transmitted to us through the flesh but, it is whispered by the lips of Unknown Gods! Maybe by sorcerers of ultimate magical beauty!