Kathy Toma and the frescos of the Church of Saint Roch#

In Gesualdo, one finds a cycle of paintings of the contemporary French artist Kathy Toma#

In the Church of Saint Roch in Gesualdo gesualdo,italy , the apse basin is frescoed with a cycle of paintings of Kathy Toma.

In autumn 1998, Kathy Toma wanted to know the village where Carlo Gesualdo lived.

Main Fresco

Left vault, the Virgin Mary with the suffering and pitiful face like that of Our Lady of Sorrows to whom the Church is consecrated.

Right panel, dedicated to Carlo Gesualdo, prince of the musicians.

‘Walking on the land of the great musician, thinking that he had seen the same landscapes and skimmed the same stones… That he had pried and implored the forgiveness in the walls of the majestic castle that dominates the residential area… where he had composed the majority of his operas’, this raised inside the artist delicate sensations and particular moods that brought her to desire to leave her souvenir to testify her feelings of admiration and gratitude.

Therefore, she decided, under suggestion of the Confraternity, to decorate the vault of the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows with a cycle of paintings, as prayer singing, faith hymn and message towards the future.

The artwork, in seven panels, has been realized with enthusiasm and passion in Paris during several months. Its representative structure moves between real and dreamt places, tradition and modernity, retying threads of forgotten events and then found again by the artist in her human and spiritual history.

The paintings are animated by figures full of remarkable expressive strength and great emotional effect, which move and fill the spaces to express the tragedy of the human sorrow, the sense of the art and the value of the prayer, the transience of the time and the glory of God. The mastery of the colors allows the artist to express the rich articulation of her very vital inside world with the use of a chromatic scale characterized by pleasant tones and tender harmony.