​This oxymoron was coined by the roman professor of  aesthetics Mario Perniola. It defines the second period of Fitzi’s painting starting in the mid 1980s and is based on a critical dialogue with the classical canon of beauty. 

What does it mean to paint today a Judgment of Paris, a Susanna and the elders or a Fall of the angels? Neither Photorealism nor metaphysical symbolism à la De Chirico brings the tensions of our age to a sufficient expression. A ‘post-metaphysical painting’ is needed. A figuration that establishes a dialog with the observer without renouncing to the avant-garde breaks with traditional painting. 

There is no way back to Arcadia. Art has to address the issues of its time. It has to confront the observer with the ozone hole, the explosion of the space shuttle, genetic engineering, global warming or the fall of the Berlin wall. But even in the works without an explicit message Fitzi addresses the existential tension of today’s life. The painting speaks, proposes an enigma and presents a contradictory image in an age of visual conformism. 

It is up to the observer to leave the hurry of all-day life and the flood of imagines of the media system in order to develop a dialogue with the painting by recalling his own associations.