The Palazzo postale in Locarno is located on the Piazza Grande. Designed by renowned Ticino architect Livio Vacchini, it was completed in 1995 and is now a listed historical monument. The compact glass and granite building has an outer column structure that contrasts with the atrium inside. Here, the counter hall opens into a three-storey-high void. Three huge concrete slabs are installed vertically above the service counters, where they serve as the surface for a series of acrylic geometric paintings. The image of a light blue trapezoid tapering towards the top is flanked on one side by that of a black wedge. The narrowing of the form underscores the floating impression of the concrete elements, lending the paintings an almost three-dimensional effect.

Since 1984, Livio Bernasconi (1932, Muralto) has given each of his works the same title: Immagine (Image). The title reflects the self-referentiality of his paintings, which unfold in abstraction, geometry, and monochromatic colours. His work at the Palazzo postale exemplifies the themes that have preoccupied Bernasconi since 1987: geometric shapes – angular here, rounded elsewhere – in which one colour dominates with other colour fields organized around it. Multiplication is another theme, evident in the sixfold repetition of the image on both sides of the concrete slabs. Notable is the dialogue that develops between the paintings and the architectural elements that bear them; the joints of the prefabricated concrete slabs and the lines in the exposed concrete created by the wooden formwork lend the painting a unique quality.

Livio Bernasconi has realized art-in-architecture projects in the public and private sectors since 1965. Although his interventions stand for themselves, they respond skilfully to the architecture. The Federal Art Commission decided that the slabs in the atrium would be the ideal surface for a painting. The architect proposed three artists, and Bernasconi was ultimately awarded the commission by the PTT Building Construction & Real Estate Department.