One must not forget that a painting must always be the reflection of a deep sensation and that deep means strange and that "strange means little known or completely unknown" wrote De Chirico in 1913.
In this type of research of the unknown, it seems as though Pierluigi Di France- sco expresses his strong and enigmatical creative torment. His artistic analysis is both meticulous and fertile of the virtually unknown part of his soul, so that his imagination assembles it into a new order which is unique and outstanding in all of his paintings.
The dominant theme of Di Francesco's art is his body without a face. It is the body of modern man overwhelmed by solitude, by life's expectations, by anxiety and bypain. That body that isn’t a "mannequin" is not violated, but is almost always venerated by the gentleness ofthe representation and as one couid say he is able to under stand the soul. Even the mannequin’s oblong eyes closed like slots with reserve and dignity, holds that which is hidden in the sanctuary ofits heart, which is both that of one's personal suffering and that ofthe world's, as is evident in "Shipwreck", a work from 1992.
Therefore, the artist’s searching aims towards understanding the essence of a persons soul in order to express the truth about life, even if, by doing so, the content is apparently simple, the shape and colour are complex. Infact, these bodies which are solitary or entangled, shaped by the blinding light and warm with the brilliant colours, are silhouetted against the scene's dark background in a full, complex, refìned and chromatic game created by a central light that puts into evidence the plasticity ofthe volumes by contrasting light with darkness.
The colours have marked deep tones that create sensations of warmth which underline the metaphysical suspension as in "the Day After" and "Deposition". The style here, therefore, is of great strength and at the same time of delicate tenderness, almost femmine in its way ofcaressing the shapes with adamantine colours as if they were in a rainbow. Di Francesco gives the impression of wanting to analyze the relationship between man and woman as in "Attempt", "Prostitute”; between man and society: "Family", "Prisoner", "Dinner"; between man and life: "Beggar", "The Lost Life", "Philosopher"; between man and universe: "Moonlight", "Christ"; between man and death: "Drugs", "Drinker", "Tired Icarus". By doing this the artist places his faceless bodies in a timeless and spaceless atmosphere obtaining a powerful magical effect.
One is near the end, to a charming magical reality nourished by silence that speaks and puts itself outside of the noise of the present to understand the reasons of humanity. Even ifthe substance were to remain entrapped in the darkness, it is like the embryo of the darkness where the womb palpitates with life.
In the midst of a conflict between the harshness and the vitality of spiritual dissension, the power with which the artist represents suffering and pain is born with a surprising three dimensionai effect.
Di Francesco who is an architect, has a complex figurative culture which is mode up of antique passions linked to his studies of the Renaissance, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Delacroix and De Chirico which allow the artist to continue this extraordinarily originai reworking ofthe sculptural forms of light and of colours that surround the figures with an emphasized senso of plastic volume that privileges the infinity of life with its vibrating energy.
He therefore passes the limit of perceptibility of taste because he is used to visual and stylistic normality which have meanings of profound humanity originating even from the stumbling of destiny that compels one to look within oneself and others through new lenses.
The fìnal result ofthis cooperation between conscience and creativity in his work is that ofa stimulating analysis of our deepest thoughts.

Anna Maria Di Paolo