File:Ugo Bongarzoni - Adrift (Alla deriva) - 50x60 - acrilic on canvas; Brussels - Rome; 2007-2011 - detail 3 of 6 - the captain.jpg

English: The painting’s project was born in February 2007 during a period in the house of the artist’s brother, in a rainy and windy Brussels whose weather deeply inspired him.

The canvas and the first colors were purchased in the old city. The artwork remained there for a year drawn, and partially painted. During the following years the painting changes many times and is enriched with different subjects: At the top right a small sleepless village is added on top of the cliff, the bronze guns, absent before, are painted, the color and thickness of the sails changes, the lacerations are accentuated, a mermaid-shaped figurehead is added to the bow; a rigging is unattached and left free to the wind, the aft windows are modified (the fixtures and the mullioned window cover are created), the stern lamps become three from two and obtain coverage, the keel, originally brown in color and fairly uniform, is made irregular and, with the use of micaceous and pearlescent colors, it becomes multicolored and full of coves, a wave-shaped view is created above the lights of the windows, the rocks are highlighted with brushstrokes of light and with the use of sand, the refluxes on the rocks and the waves are made more full-bodied, as well as the splashes of water on the keel and on the broken waves of the cliff. With the exception of the sand used for the rocks and a thin metal wire used for the rigging of the sailing ship and for a branch of the lightning bolt, all the subjects in relief were made exclusively through repeated depositions of acrylic color. Elements not immediately evident: scales on the mermaid's tail; the rigging; the mast and the sea can be glimpsed from the largest tear in the sail at the bow; on the cliff at the top right, a pair of seagulls take shelter in a nest sheltered from the fury of the storm; the little anchor near the figurehead; at the stern the captain with his hair in the wind holds the rudder firmly in his hands; in the central part of the ship a bald sailor grabs hold two shrouds with both hands; on the lower right, a second sailor, thrown overboard by the fury of the storm, fights for his life by clinging to the reef. There are three signatures of the artist in the artwork, in addition to the one on the back of the canvas: one is confused with the reflux of foam at the bottom right, the second is to the right of the branch of the lightning that comes out of the canvas, the last one is finally biological, a hair completely hidden by the color. The work alludes to the condition of loneliness and fragility of human nature, combining Leopardi's vision of a stepmother nature with those of William Hope Hodgson of a mysterious, sentient, horrifying sea and of the writer Joseph Conrad who well described the devastating power of the phenomenon natural storm. Life is not an inalienable right, it can be taken from us at any moment at the slightest change in the physical conditions of the planet, on which we are nothing but specks of dust. A natural law that, on a larger scale, applies to solar systems, galaxies and the entire universe. The sailing ship represents the man who, inevitably alone (adrift), stoically faces his condition of obvious weakness in front of the forces of nature and the unknown. A literary reference could be the figure of Ulysses in canto XXVI of Dante's Inferno which thus says to his companions ("You were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge ..") The few verses associated with the painting, present at the end of the dedicated video on YouTube written by the author on the back of the canvas, are dedicated to the partner (or companion) that everyone hopes to meet at least once in his life and that give meaning to the unequal struggle between the sailing ship and the giant wave.

                                                EXHIBITIONS 

2014 Dioscuri Theatre in Quirinale in Rome

2016 FIJLKAM museum center in Ostia (Rome)

2016 Castello Ducale Orsini inFiano Romano (Rome)

2018 FIJLKAM museum center in Ostia (Rome)

2018 Lattanzi Palace in Blera ( Viterbo )

2019 Lattanzi Palace in Blera ( Viterbo )

2021 Museo del Colle del Duomo di Viterbo

                                                  VIDEOS 

"Adrift Making of" YouTube video