Omaggio a Guercino

Guercino's cherub painted with a roller in colour — a tribute and a new beginning.

Omaggio a Guercino is a mural created by artist Neve in April 2023 at DumBo – Distretto Urbano del Commercio, Bologna, for the URBANA festival.

"[Putto]" is a large-scale outdoor mural painted in April 2023 on the Interrail building at DumBo (Distretto Urbano del Commercio), via Casarini 19, Bologna — for the third edition of the URBANA festival, curated by Simona Gavioli and Cesare Bettini. The work is part of "Ol(tre)Futuro," a project that invited Italian and international muralists to reinterpret the great school of Bolognese painting in a contemporary key. As the curator described it: the project was "pensato per cominciare il grande dialogo con quella che è stata una delle scuole di pittura più importanti della storia dell'arte" — to open a dialogue with Bolognese painting tradition in a contemporary urban register. Other artists on the Interrail building included Nean (Belgium), Zebu (Germany), and DearLozada (Peru). Neve's contribution is a large-scale putto — the Baroque infant figure, plump and golden-skinned, with white feathered wings rendered in gestural brushstrokes against a deep blue-black stormy sky. The putto holds in both hands a large brass instrument: a horn or tuba, its golden curves catching the light, the bell of the instrument turned toward the viewer. Red drapery is gathered across the lower body. The face — round, alert, Baroque in its warmth and directness — occupies the upper right of the composition. The putto is a central image in Bolognese and Emilian Baroque painting: Annibale Carracci, Guido Reni, Guercino all populated their devotional works with these musical infant figures. To take this image and render it at the scale of an industrial building's facade — using a roller and brush rather than spray — is both homage and transformation. The mark of the roller is visible in the brushwork of the sky and wings: a technique carried directly from the experience of Tunisia months earlier, but here for the first time deployed in full color. This was the first mural Neve painted in color using roller and brush alone, without spray. The technique produces a different surface quality from his spray work — broader marks, the sky more atmospheric, the flesh tones built up in layers that recall oil painting more directly than aerosol. From the festival press: "Gli artisti invitati interverranno su tre nuove superfici [...] Interrail sul quale prenderanno vita i lavori di Neve (Italia), Nean (Belgio), Zebu (Germania) e DearLozada (Perù)." "Il progetto nasce con l'idea di restituire all'ex scalo ferroviario del Ravone la propria identità di spazio propulsore di energie creative e cultura urbana."