Franco Cimitan was born in Bressanone (Bz) in 1960. Since young he loves painting and drawing, form early 80's he worked greater interest with more ancient techniques. His first exhibition was in 1985. It was a group exhibition that already saw him projected into a Mitteleuropean atmosphere: the "Biennale of the young artists of Mediterranean Europe" in Barcellona. Follow then several solo and group shows. In 1993 he was one of the founders of the symbolist group called Triplani, which purposes are the research of alternative artistic languages. The work of Cimitan a re-examine of oniric feelings that exceed in surrealistic and metaphysical atmospheres still maintaing firm his roots with venetian landscape tradition. On his canvas clearly emerges the research of the past from light and shade and backlighting effects obtained through an elaborated technique based on laying oil colors on canvas or board and finishing with bees wax as a veil.

Franco Cimitan è nato a Bressanone (Bz) nel 1960. Fin da ragazzo ama la pittura e il disegno e dagli inizi degli anni '80 si dedica con maggiore interesse alle tecniche pittoriche più antiche. La sua prima mostra è del 1985. Si tratta di una mostra collettiva che lo vede però già proiettato in un'atmosfera mitteleuropea: la "Biennale dei Giovani Artisti dell'Europa Mediterranea" a Barcellona. Seguono poi numerose mostre collettive e personali. E', nel 1993, uno dei fondatori del gruppo simbolista Triplani, che si propone la ricerca di linguaggi artistici alternativi. L'opera di Cimitan è una rivisitazione di sensazioni oniriche che sconfinano in atmosfere surreali e metafisiche, ma mantenendo le radici ben salde con la tradizione dei paesaggisti veneti. Nelle sue tele, dalle quali emerge chiaramente la ricerca del passato, gli effetti di chiaro scuro e controluce sono ottenuti attraverso una tecnica elaborata, che si basa sulla stesura di colori ad olio su tela e tavola, utilizzando come velatura-finitura la cera d'api.

The main characteristic of the Franco Cimitan’s art is the attention paid to the pictorial representation of the lights. In fact Cimitan tries to give autonomy to the light by representing it not as mere reflection over things, but as a self-sufficient atmospheric entity. In order to get this impression he uses the paint freely so that the images derived from this process gain an almost abstract aspect, slightly caressed by a blaze of light that reminds the dawn. Or the dusk. The light is the true protagonist of his paintings, even in its absence, able to transform them into something more than a simbolyc path. This art has the capacity of exploring man’s interior world and of taking him back to the very centre of his deepest though.

When I look at his landscapes, so simply structured, I feel like every form, apparently casual, hides a mistery to be revealed. There is a whole poetry in their light, bitter, rough and there is poetry also in the rendering of the night-light. Delicate pictorial oxymoron, his nights posses the intensity of a daylight landscape, so immerged as to disappear, dissolved into its own colour and light, which as a shell sorrounds things and blurs them. It is nature saw as a symbol, with which the artist confronts himself and from which he chooses those atmospheres that reflect his inner reality the best. Cimitan’s production is, in may opinion, an oeuvre of ideas and its symbolic nature amplifies the ambiguity as well as the seduction. The crave for the mist more than for the sun, the particolar way of linking the figures to the landscape, the water spring, the reflections of the light are expression of a desire for living closer to nature and for being in harmony with the universe.
- Lucia Majer