Trebeski - Leidi

Alberto Trebeski
Between symbolism, emotional impressionism and abstract expressionism
When one begins to evaluate the work of a Master, one generally collects together all possible material including the analyses of other art critics or simple admirers. In the case of Trebeski I have available an extra element which gives me a significant advantage over all those who have written or will write about him. Alberto and I are childhood friends and therefore I have been able to follow the evolution of his painting from the very first steps, comparing it with his wellbeing, the rapport with certain events, with others and with life in general.
I can take the merit (or blame) for introducing Trebeski to Primo Conti, the Master who Pablo Picasso defined as l’enfant prodige at the beginning of the 1900’s. In the villa at Fiesole where the great Master lived and worked, Trebeski was able to touch with his very hand the birth of Conti’s works, he could share the profound labour that an artist must go through in order to express his true feelings, and he acquired the secrets of technique and means to express himself.
I believe that it was only then that Trebeski, letting flow without any sentimental or emotional mask, was able to achieve a sense to the voyage of his own being that started with his first efforts.
Approaching the painting of Alberto Trebeschi (Trebeski), the soul of the observer is struck by the sensation of recognizing what he is looking at without being able to define it consciously. The paintings, in fact, describe man’s emotions albeit through a cultured process of symbolic simplification of form and colour. The viewer is only able to glimpse reality giving flow to the memories and emotions of his own existence without trying to discover a rational relationship between signs and colours.
Trebeski is a painter who profoundly understands the art that has preceded him but has reorganized the principles according to a very personal way of feeling which, for example, in paintings such as Breve incontro, Panteismo or Presenze, seems to develop along the lines of what we can define as emotional impressionism. In fact, in his work there reappears that apparent incompleteness of form and relationship that in 1874 led the critic Louis Leroy to define as impressionist the paintings of Monet, Manet and Renoir. Now, deliberately, he veils further using the filter of emotion.
The impression of reality is picked up by Trebeski when overcome by joy, sadness, love or ecstasy, he is not ashamed to express his most profound sentiments making the world easier understood in all its enormous vitality. This indeed is the explosive force of his work and through this new and extremely particular emotive process we are offered a vision of reality which, although being profoundly his, pushes us to start communicating with the most hidden and real of our feelings.
In all the works of Trebeski one observes, as has already been said, an intense process of symbolic simplification at the limit of consciousness and unconsciousness which undoubtedly draws in the observer, but especially expresses the emotive involvement of the artist himself. The violence with which the emotion is represented, the essentiality of lines and colours, places him very close to abstract expressionism.
However, it is neither of abstract expressionism nor emotional impressionism, as previously stated, that I wish to talk about: in fact I profoundly believe that this is a new path of expressive art. For example, in New York 9/11, in Bagdad 2007 or in the series of the four Seasons of Life, he clearly plays with a symbolism aware of the forms, whereas his works such as Sahel 2007, Motociclista or Ophelia essentially let you be lead by unconscious perception. Unconscious perception which pushes him to further simplify the signs pushing even more so these works towards the symbolic minimalism of the form which remain however, always violently upheld by the colours.
In part, the phrase of Gustave Moreau – “I only believe in what I don’t see and exclusively in what I feel” – seems appropriate for the paintings of Trebeski who, perhaps also due to his scientific background, extrapolates the most profound significance so as to overcome any limitations as, for example, is clearly evident in the Numbers series, the Mangiatore di Pesce or the Pianeta Rossa.
Such art can therefore be considered living works in continuous change since the emotions that they create in the observer do not derive exclusively from what has been fixed on the canvas but rather, from one occasion to another, a changing emotion according to the humour of the person looking at them.
In conclusion, Alberto my friend, continue to tear yourself apart, open yourself to us with your works, allow us through your eyes and your heart to admire the grandness, the joy and the desperation of man and the whole world.
Angelo Leidi
Art Critic