Enzo Meglio
Tajan is delighted to invite you to discover the brand-new paintings of Enzo Meglio. A vibrant and inspiring universe to explore this new season in our exhibition spaces. At Tajan from September 10.
Reading to the Condemned Man
Oil on canvas, 2025
117 x 190 cm
« « Where were you?”
“At the moment when Clarissa escapes from the rendezvous house.” Cosimo began to leaf through the book and then said, “Ah, yes, here it is. So…” He began to read aloud. – Italo Calvino, Il Barone Rampante, 1960.
Cosimo introduces the bandit Gian dei Brughi to reading. From then on, it becomes an inexhaustible source of entertainment for a man who had been bored for months waiting for the law to forget him. Having become a keen reader, Gian dei Brughi forgot how to be a good bandit, and his last escapade did not last long. His arrest deprived him of the freedom to read, much to his regret.
Cosimo then decided to read to his friend, first through the bars of Gian’s prison cell and then from the treetops near his gallows. The bandit’s last thrills were the adventures of one of his peers, the criminal Jonathan Wild, whose tragic fate he shared. This touching friendship was based on a shared love of reading in the trees or listening to stories when the other had the book in his hands.
Bibliographical source: Italo Calvino, Il Barone Rampante, 1960.
Crossing the city through the trees
Oil on canvas, 2025
15 x 15 cm
“Ombrosa no longer exists. When I look at the empty sky, I wonder if it ever really existed.” – Italo Calvino, Il Barone Rampante, 1960.
Every journey Cosimo undertakes, even those with insignificant destinations, takes on the air of an adventure. Reading Il Barone Rampante invites us to look up at the trees and imagine an alternative path to our everyday lives. It often seems impossible to go far relying only on branches. Cosimo’s geography must therefore be very different from ours, as his journeys, and their leafy settings, never reach a dead end.
Bibliographical source: Italo Calvino, Il Barone Rampante, 1960.
The Dispute
Oil on canvas, 2025
37 x 37 cm
“She kept her word. She never returned to Ombrosa. […] Then came the moment of destructive violence: he attacked one tree after another, starting at the top, tearing off the leaves one by one, in no time at all, like caterpillars, leaving them bare as in winter, even though they were not deciduous trees. ” – Italo Calvino, Il Barone Rampante, 1960.
The loss of Viola Violante d’Ondariva devastates Cosimo. Their tumultuous love comes to a definitive end when she goes into exile far from their native region, where no tree path allows him to follow her. He then strips the bark from his perches. This storm-ravaged landscape reflects a lonely spirit who realizes that if a simple clearing separates him from his beloved, he will lose her forever.
Bibliographical source: Italo Calvino, Il Barone Rampante, 1960.
The Baptism of the Cat
Oil on panel, 2025
150 x 70 cm
Or how the village of Tremenac’h in the Pagan region disappeared beneath the dunes.
Two children play a trick on a blind priest. They ask him to baptize their little brother, but instead bring him their cat. A meow alerts the priest to his mistake. Enraged, he curses the young children and their village, condemning it to be buried by sand.
Source: The story of the baptism of the cat is associated with the archaeological site of Iliz-Koz, a medieval parish and necropolis in Tremenac’h, in the commune of Plouguerneau. This legend is mentioned in Le Léon: Histoire et géographie contemporaine, Louis Élégoët (ed.), 2007.
Sewing the apples back onto the tree
Oil on canvas, 2025
116 x 90 cm
The Story of the Old Man, the Old Woman, the Pea, and the Bean tells how an elderly couple, climbing up enormous vegetable plants, reach a paradiselike place. The divine being who lives there welcomes these visitors on condition that they do not try to pick the fruit from his garden. They disobey and all the fruit from an apple tree falls to the ground. To hide their misdeed, they spend the whole night sewing the fruit back onto the branches with their hair, but to no avail.
Bibliographic source: The Story of the Old Man, the Old Woman, the Pea and the Bean, a lithuanian tale, found in Natha Caputo, Tales of the Four Winds, 1975.
Cosimo and his uncle’s plans
Oil on canvas, 2025
15 x 15 cm
“They would meet up on certain low trees; [his uncle] would climb up there with a stepladder, his arms laden with rolls of drawings; and they would discuss for hours the increasingly complex developments of the aqueduct. ” – Italo Calvino, Il Barone Rampante, 1960.
Cosimo and his uncle observe the layout of an irrigation project they have invented. This collaboration, which will ultimately not be implemented, nevertheless brings the two characters closer together. Cosimo discovers that his secretive relative is passionate about beekeeping and hydraulics, and that he isolates himself by turning his attention to his beehives or his engineering plans. I wanted to respect the modesty of these two recluses. From the distance imposed by this painting, the viewer cannot hear their discussion.
Bibliographical source: Italo Calvino, Il Barone Rampante, 1960.
Oil on canvas, 2025
60 x 72 cm
Oil on canvas
60 x 72 cm
Oil on canvas, 2025
60 x 72 cm
“Cosimo wanted sheep or lambs brought to him, and he tied them to the branches himself. […] He too dressed up as a sheep […] and waited for nightfall under the trees, sleeping under the stars. ” – Italo Calvino, Il Barone Rampante, 1960.
Surrounded by sheep and disguised as one of them, Cosimo waits for the wolves to arrive. This patient strategist during this long hunt may have been inspired by Ulysses fleeing Polyphemus’ cave under the cover of his flock. Proud to no longer be among the others below the trees, Cosimo abandons their way of thinking in favor of original cunning and creativity. Here, he proves that rising to the heights allows one to see the world better. Earlier in the book, he declared to two passersby: “From up here, you all look a little small.”
Bibliographical source: Italo Calvino, Il Barone Rampante, 1960.
The Basset Hound and the Wheat Field
Oil on canvas, 2025
32 x 40 cm
“Ottimo Massino sprang into the meadow and, as if he had grown younger, ran at full speed. From the ash tree where he was perched, Cosimo began to whistle and call to him: “Here, come back here, Ottimo Massimo! Where are you going?“ But the dog did not obey him […] he ran and ran across the field until all that could be seen was a distant comma, his tail, and then that too disappeared.” Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees, 1960.
The dog adopted by Cosimo smells a familiar scent in the distance, that of his first mistress. His loyalty is suddenly no longer to the boy, and he returns to this distant memory. He runs off in her direction, creating an unbridgeable gap between the young boy and his beloved basset hound.
Bibliographical source: Italo Calvino, Il Barone Rampante, 1960.
The Start of the Race
Oil on canvas, 2025
100 x 100 cm
“All these hidalgos and ladies maintained their usual composed attitudes, even amid the inevitable discomforts of their journey. Some men, in order to remain astride the branches, used saddles […]” – Italo Calvino, Il Barone Rampante, 1960.
Discovering that he is not the only one living in the trees, Cosimo meets men who lack nothing of the cavalier’s regalia except the horse. Derived from a world where everything can be transposed to the treetops, as imagined by Italo Cavino, this painting also proposes to move the equestrian portrait there. Descendants of the Spanish nobles whom Cosimo encounters, these jockeys are keen to preserve their traditions without questioning the immobility that they impose on them.
Bibliographical source: Italo Calvino, Il Barone Rampante, 1960.
Major Streiter’s head in the closet
Oil on panel, 2024
30 x 30 cm
During a night of iconoclasm, a man vandalizes the statue of a political model. Taking the monument’s head with him, Allen Purcell hid it in the closet of his apartment. The painting depicts its discovery by the vandal’s companion, the day after the crime. Attempting to make the viewer feel the wife’s surprise, this painting evokes the irruption of the fantastic into the heart of everyday life.
Bibliographical source: Philip K. Dick, The Man Who Japed, 1956
Gennaro tenderly reads a letter from his mother
Oil on panel, 2024
20 x 30 cm
A man could not wait to sit before opening the letter he received from his mother. He doesn’t know her true identity, having thought himself an orphan until very late in life, but he regularly receives these anonymous letters which fill him with joy. The viewer of this painting, if he knows about Victor Hugo’s drama on which it is based, sadly remembers that Gennaro’s mother is in fact a woman he hates, Lucretia Borgia. This painting, however, maintains the young man’s illusory tenderness.
Bibliographical source: Victor Hugo, Lucrèce Borgia, 1833
Glimmung Failed
Oil on canvas, 2025
85 x 100 cm
Scientists have joined forces to restore a civilization lost at the bottom of the ocean. Leading this effort is a fantastical being, Glimmung, who belongs to this marine environment. For him, this quest is above all a way of preserving his habitat and cultural heritage. However, the venture suffers a setback: Glimmung falters under the weight of the titanic effort required to achieve his goal. This leaves the scientists helpless in front of the ocean engulfing this monumental Atlantean.
Bibliographic source: Philip K. Dick, The Galactic Pot-Healer, 1969
The Choice of planks
Oil on panel, 2025
90 x 50 cm
In the midst of a fantastic flood, inundating a valley and forcing its inhabitants to retreat to higher ground, several rafts must be built to brave the waters. The task is therefore to choose and distribute the planks that will be used for these boats.
Bibliographic source: Jean Giono, Batailles dans la montagne, 1937
The Growth of Peas and Beans
Oil on panel, 2024
30 x 30 cm
One morning, an elderly couple surprises their rooster scratching the ground, where he finds pea and bean seeds. The old man leaves this meager harvest on the floor of his house, which suddenly becomes the scene of the supernatural growth of these plants. They lift the dining table, pierce the roof of the house and only stop growing after opening a natural path to the heavens.
Bibliographic source: The Story of the Old Man, the Old Woman, the Peas, and the Beans, a lithuanian tale, found in Natha Caputo, Tales of the Four Winds, 1975.
ENZO MEGLIO
Latest Paintings
On view from September 10
Tajan, 37 rue des Mathurins, 75008 Paris
Contact
Katia Besnier
+ 33 1 53 30 30 18 – [email protected]