At a certain point in his life Cesare felt a urgent need to express his feelings and his imagination through painting, translating on to canvas stories made up of lines and shapes but especially colours, which Cesare cherishes and wants to share above everything else.
Speaking about painting (as about cuisine) Cesare tells: “I am self-taught, I have learnt with the help of some friends.” But his pictures, on canvas or wooden boards, reveal a surprising richness. His colours are strong and well-balanced, his subjects extremely varied, though they mostly depict nature and landscapes: they tell tales heard or imagined; they outline hills where rows of tiny cars or motorbikes climb precariously, their balance constantly in question as they negotiate the slopes. There are brilliantly coloured flowers, evoking memories through imagination and the force of a free spirit.
Sometimes these subjects are painted on sheets of white paper, sometimes on the azure paper that was used to wrap sugar (still a memory of the bottega of his childhood) or on the straw-yellow paper of butchers. They serve as the background of customized menus, where the list of dishes, copied in elegant handwriting, is placed side by side with flowers, fish, animals, and splashes of colour. These represent another form of creativity, no less evocative, which will be exhibited in Autumn 2013 in Cherasco, under the heading “99 Painted Menus”.