Thomas Braida

Thomas Braida seems to remain tied to a figurative style that even in dreamlike and surreal terms often returns subjects that draw from a fantastic tank of different figures that seem to come from Goya as well as the remake of Goya by the Chapman brothers, and also from the Roman school and in particular from Scipione and Mafai, where the colours become darker and the magical realism of time is broken. Speaking of figurative painting, even for Braida there may be references (much more elastic for him) than traditional pictorial genres: like painting the historical, the mythological and the contemporary allegories with which the artist expresses the current state of things, as in "Bored Europe" of 2017. Braida’s work seems to be a transversal exploration of the past, where there is not only a visual artistic heritage but also a literal one with the stories of Emilio Salgari.  His notebooks are therefore the result of his insatiable desire for painting which leads him to draw an average of four hours a day. For the occasion, Thomas Braida donated some pages of his notebooks to the MoRE Museum, in particular the notebook 16 of 2015 - 2016, the notebook 17 of 2016 - 2017 and the notebook 18 of 2017-2018.

This donation opens the door to what we might call pictorial planning: here is this notebook, full of references and artistic literary suggestions, which in the hands of Braida is filled with drawings that reflect perhaps the artist's need to constantly paint on anything like jar caps, glossy magazines or canvases. However, taking a step back from the romantic vision of the artist who sketches his subjects on the notebook, what emerges from Braida's drawings is not a simple and quick pencil stroke on paper, but rather the pages of the notebooks give us a design full of colours rendered by pastels, watercolours, felt-tip pens and nibs.