Oreste Tarditi, Painter of the Langhe

“The Painter of the Langhe" is a blue-blooded son of Novello: born on the 15th of December, 1908 he finally returned to the town of his birth after having traveled Italy in search of work.
Painting was his work; relaxation, a commitment to live according to his personal nature.
The art critic Prof. Adalberto Rossi writes of him: "Tarditi is a born watercolorist of rare skill: to him, the watercolor is his friend. It is a technique that goes well with his emotional temperament. He wants to convey the emotion of the moment right away and in this respect watercolors allow him to fix the impression immediately."
Ernesto Caballo in "Italian Artists of the 1900s” writing about Tarditi’s watercolors writes: “Art can be achieved even with the most varied techniques, provided that the moment is right. For Tarditi they are just moments, but they are authentic moments: lights that drip, emanating from hazel groves, presages of dead days, of celebration, on the ridge of hills, glimpses of houses, stony villages with houses in some decrepit corner of the Langa, in a spirit of secular penance, of silences resigned ... "
His skies are atmospheric, mostly furrowed by clouds, white, pink, gray, in which the color evaporates, disappears and approaches the threshold of silence. Often, the mirror image of the water reflects the sky and the dim clouds that dissolve into each other.
Tarditi very happily depicted what Beppe Fenoglio dubbed "the great river" or "our Tanaro": sky, water, trees in the new, tender green of spring, on a rainy morning, when a light mist rising from the river envelops and dissolves the fleeting vision in a thousand ways.
To obtain his unique "viewpoint" Tarditi chose an appropriate angle, often climbing the bell towers. On the terrace of his house he had an aerial lodge in ambo iron, which was a bit wobbly but nevertheless secure.
Tarditi pushed his viewers to see things in blue and pink, to discover the intimate joy of "contemplation", to seek, despite everything, grounds for optimism.
Tarditi can be found everywhere here; his energy, vision and open heart that reflect his landscapes. He was every bit a straightforward man: simple, spontaneous, communicative, naive as a poet but as a poet, generous and hospitable.
Tarditi died in Novello in 1991.

Gian Pietro Riva, The Decisive and Intense Brushwork Painter

Though born in Turin in 1930, he can be considered an adopted citizen of Novello. After spending years during his adolescence and young adulthood in the area, he began to love the land around him and took root among the people. Slowly but surely, he became one with the Langhe. Thus, after a long period in Turin, he eventually returned to Novello so that he wound never again be far from the winding form of the jugs, the geometrical symmetry of the rows of vines, or the dense colors of summer and autumn.
The colors of the Langa: these are the common themes of his painting.
Riva chooses decisive, intense brushstrokes that set the visual impression and materialize to fill the eye create sensory perception.
He chose for the most part landscape as a subject; the vineyard took a clear and crisp form, from the gray winter splendor to the emerald height of summer, the trails meander between the white slender fields and meadows.