Libero Nada is a painter and a labourer. Or better yet, a labourer and a painter. He is not someone for whom art is a noble pastime, but a true passion, which he has doggedly pursued for a long time. He began as a typographer’s apprentice, taking art by correspondence courses after the work’s day was done. He would paint, over and over again, late into the night, because he knew, “that this was real life and not a job.”

As a painter, Libero Nada is a practitioner of art; someone who must walk before painting and live before composing. Throughout his career, Libero participated in dozens of en plein aire painting competitions. This style of painting is an exchange between the landscape and the brush, between canvas and territory, there are physical components for the eye to behold and the sensation to be “immersed in the place that one wants to portray alongside other painters who equally want the same thing.”

Libero Nada is deeply in love with his territory, the Langhe. The hills and views are the main subjects, foreshorten rendered, to capture the emotions and experience that “fuses vision and feeling, real and imaginary, true and interpretation.”

Behind the apparent simplicity of his wheat fields, the carefree joy of certain lavender-colored skies, the shy movement of the poppies and the twisted greeting of the trees, is the eye of a painter who tried to look beyond the exceptional scenic beauty of the Langhe.

Libero, why do you paint the hills of the Langhe? 

Certainly because of my origins. I was born and raised in Rodello. After moving to Alba, I continued to view all these places with the eyes of my childhood. Even today, the landscape of Rodello is felt deep in my heart, I continue to marvel its stunning view projected to the Alta Langa. 

In your opinion, does the Alta Langa have a visual identity? 

I am convinced that the truly distinctive trait of the Alta Langa is found in what is unseen rather than a few physical elements of nature. 

In what sense? 

The Alta Langa is a mosaic of different landscapes. The curves of the hills lined with vineyards or dotted with hazel groves; the shadows of the woods; the chiaroscuro of the valleys. And then, suddenly, the wheat fields, the mists that leave uncovered only the crests, the brooms, the oaks, the poppies. Even the snow, when it falls on the Langhe, acquires an infinity of different colors and shades, due to its irregular nature. 

These things, which taken by themselves are wonderful, also exist however in other places. It is the dynamism of these elements and their interaction that makes Alta Langa what it is.

 

What do you mean by dynamism?

 It is the force that gives life to these landscapes, which moves them and makes them alive, therefore is unique. This is what drove me to paint and to look for the “gaze experiences” that run through me every time I go out to walk in the Langhe.

 And what is this force you speak of?

 It is the wind, or “Marin” as it is called in dialect. It brings life and perfumes. In the shortest of terms, one could say that I paint the wine; I seek to capture it in the moment when inanimate objects are brought to live with movement.  If I had to say what the Alta Langa is, I would say that it is wind that spreads a sweet and suffused atmosphere. Not a uniform or directional wind, but a breath of life that morphs. It is an unmistakable uniqueness.

Libero Nada – Dialogo tra ombra e luce

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LIBERO NADA

Libero Nada is the youngest of seven siblings born in Rodello in 1946. His interest in painting began at a very young age. He began his professional life in typography, and later in graphics and photography at Edizione Paoline. In the 1960s, he attended a painting course by correspondence, dedicated all his free time in pursuit of this passion. He participated in numerous exhibitions and competitions of en pleine air painting. His first solo exhibition was in 1971, in Alba, where he resides and paints today.