The Altrove Cycle
Altrove (Elsewhere) is Barbara Pietrasanta’s most recent painting cycle, developed from 2021 with works through 2025. The starting point is climate change understood not only as an objective fact but as a collective state of mind: an atmosphere of disturbance that envelops the present, uproots trees, sweeps away time. The female figures in this cycle are immersed in unstable atmospheric landscapes, suspended between presence and absence, their gaze turned elsewhere. The works are oil on canvas, predominantly large format. Altrove marks an evolution from the previous cycles Naufragi and Awakening: where those explored the figure in relation to water and identity, here the conflict shifts toward air, climate, loss and memory.
Climate change is not merely a fact …it is a feeling, a tremor of the soul. The air of now shivers and swells, stirring the trees, sweeping time like dust. We linger still in a moment already worn, our eyes drifting toward a distant elsewhere.
