Renato Tosini, a Sicilian artist, with his pictorial works, does not allow any interference, neither of style nor of current thought. The light, the colors, the clothes worn by the characters of Tosini, with the unmistakable bowler hat, place him far, in time and space, from a Sicily vibrant with colors, perfumes and harmonies.
Yet something Sicilian peeps from the works of Tosini: it is the irrepressible taste of satire which can not be renounced by a “Sicilian”, a vital need that is sometimes cruel but never vulgar mockery; it is a “veiled smile” on the miseries of humanity, a philosophical attitude to see the life that all Sicilians, no one excluded, have held up over the centuries, a barrier against insults in the history of a land as longed as looted of its assets, but not in the popular soul, immortal for culture, traditions and affections.
All of Tosini’s painting is poised between reality and dream, nothing is defined or indefinable, only his great intellectual charge is a fixed point: his clear and imperative messages are there, before us, to be heard and implemented as advice coming from a disenchanted “big old man”, now free from influences and, less than ever, from disappointing frivolities.
