Contrasts

(Maiori 1891 – Cetara 1978)
Manfredi Nicoletti represents the modernist currents that swept through the Amalfi Coast between the 1910s and 1930s, marking the emergence of a new "vertical" interpretation of the landscape that responded to the contemporary presence of international artists such as Maurits Cornelis Escher. This artistic dialogue is essential to understanding Nicoletti’s Cézannesque decomposition into chromatic zones, which infuses the pictorial matter with a restless, teeming vitality, as previously observed in his 1926 view of Minori (entry 37). The work reveals an artist attuned to the Neapolitan variations of the Novecento movement, working in close alignment with his friend Luigi Crisconio; both painters shared a decisive departure from naturalism in pursuit of a rigorous formal synthesis, which defines this 1937 canvas titled Contrasts.