The famous Sassari painter would have turned 97 in October. He continued to paint until a few months after his death
Federico Spano
03 September 2021
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SASSARI. Mourning in the world of Sardinian art. Sassari painter Liliana Cano passed away at 96. He would have turned 97 next October.
Born in Gorizia in 1924 from Sardinian parents, she grows up to the age of 6 in Milan. In 1930 began a long period of removals, changes of city, travel, which led Liliana Cano to live in half of Italy, from Rome to Turin, from Barletta to Padua, from Vicenza to Naples (displaced for 9 months). The family’s wanderings ended in Sardinia in 1945: after an adventurous journey aboard the cruiser Garibaldi. Having landed on the island at the end of the Second World War, Liliana Cano begins to teach, attending the Sassari artistic environment, of which she will be among the protagonists in the 50s and 60s.
Arrived at retirement and with her grown-up children, in 1977, Liliana resumes her journey. He moved to France for almost 20 years. Starting to paint some of his luckiest and most beautiful subjects, such as the famous gypsies. In 1996 he returns to Sassari, because he feels that the moment of his end is approaching and he wants to die in his land. The return, however, is not a point of arrival. His artistic production does not stop and in his works the memories of his travels, of his emotions, of his youth relive. The theme that most involves her, since her return to the island, is the religious one. Its activity has in fact left extraordinary marks in many churches and ecclesial places.
Liliana Cano has never stopped painting. She did not stop even after being sick, in June 2020, moving from one room to another in her country house, on the outskirts of Sassari, with the oxygen tank in tow. The new crisis, which brought her to the hospital, stopped only a few months ago and last Wednesday. After a little more than a day of hospitalization, the painter died in the night between 2 and 3 September. The whole of Sardinia loses a great woman, an extraordinary artist, with an immense production. Each of his works is unmistakable, each mark left by Liliana Cano’s brush bears her signature, her poetics and her extraordinary colors.–
