Notturno

Floating, almost organic bodies draw near to one another, brush one another, intertwine; the tenuous, matte colours, in tonal accord, from which a short red note rings out high up in the composition, push the bodies to the epidermis of a surface that becomes the painting’s only space.
In the mid-1950s Santomaso experienced a stylistic turning point. He abandoned that closing-off of space, that rapid marking of the painting which - prompted by a memory of Hans Hartung – had characterized his work in his Abstract-Concrete period. Instead, he began to work on a chromatic inlay which, as if immersed in a spring of water, finally blossoms on the surface in transparencies, shivers and tremors. This was the period of his full maturity, culminating in the major retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam in 1960. At times the colours were almost liquid; at others – especially towards the end of the decade – they became denser and lumpier. Then the rapid marks of yesterday became a more sweeping, more constructive gesture that resembled, probably influenced by Afro, American action painting.