What I like are scenes of solid, rigorous architecture, and those with beautiful colour harmonies, which is where my truer pictorial interest prevails. But the fact of having preferred to reproduce scenes from my valley, observed from different places, from the slopes of Craveggia, up to the high pastures of Cimalmotto and the slopes of the remotest snowfields, all influenced by my many nostalgic feelings and affections, has the effect that more often than not the pictorial vision is associated with an emotion that determines the choice of inspirational subjects, and means that I choose intimate, poetic themes over generic vastness. Thus, in unknown, subconscious ways, technique comes to obey the heart.

Carlo Fornara, from Giovanni Bertacchi’s Come nasce un paesaggio (How a Landscape is Born), in Le vie d’Italia number 12, 1936