Texts:

• Poetic reflection by Alda Merini
• Dark of Light by Mauro Corradini
• A place where history is created by Giuliano Santini

Poetic reflection by Alda Merini

“The art of the young always surprises us even if at times they manage to find unnatural cavities that we have never searched. Probably the simple ageing of a trivial and fundamentally tragic life has given us a sense of joyful memory that they do not possess.
However, in their environmental cavity, in their illustration they seek maybe the solution of a divine mystery, but not always, also the sorrow of life.
The obligation of the critic is not that of rejoicing the young with a personal applause and then leaving them to die, but instead to accept it, to bestow dignity of criticism to the youth which goes beyond enthusiasm.”  

 Milan, 06.01.04

The Poet Alda  Merini and The Artist Giuliano Grittini

by Mauro Corradini
DARK OF LIGHT

In that fundamental sample published by Walter Benjamin in 1955, and translated into Italian around ten years later (L’opera d’arte nell’epoca della sua riproducibilità tecnica, Turin, Einaudi, 1966), the German scholar stated, referring essentially to the photography and the cinema, that “the technical reproduction capabilities of a work of art emancipates for the first time / in the history of the world this last parasitic existence in the ritual environment” (pg. 26 - 27). The reference to photography and to cinema is evident in the technical exaltation of the mechanism of repetition of the art object; for this reason, immediately after, Benjamin adds that: “the work of art reproduced becomes, on an ever increasing scale, the production of a work of art arranged for being reproduced” (pg. 27). As confirmation, always referring to the film, Benjamin forewarns in an annotation that: “the reproduction capabilities of films merge immediately in the technique of their production” (pg. 50). The reflections on German history do not immediately adapt to the traditional graphical work (silographic, chalcographic, lithographic and serigraphic); the repeated technical production of the engraving, for example, is contained within in that ritual which Benjamin identifies as a characteristic aspect in the elaboration and in the production of the unique work of art: the inking, the cleaning of the screen, the press, the damp paper, the correct pressure of the screen and the page between the felts, all appear in a reproductive mechanism (the white gloves, the paper “tweezers” or the double corners of the paper in order to not touch the sheet with the fingers, well-known processes of every engraver) that sends in its own complex processes directly to the unique work of art, more than the seriality, to the naturally repetitive technological production.

We are certain, that by watching the same film in two different cinemas, maybe even days and thousands of miles apart, of always seeing the same film; watching, on the other hand, two panels, coming from the same press, aloof a technical time contained and restricted, I can verify very slight differentiation, in the tone of the black, for example, in the better or worse quality of the ink, as well as the casual flourishes, which every now and again, as with all living materials, make their appearance even on the sheet (particularly if they are left abandoned for a reasonably long period).

The original consideration remains, that we make that of the student: the engraving, like the photography or the film, is born for reproduction, better said: it takes life only when it is reproduced. If the professional engraver can also become an enthusiast of the screen, they can ensue the grooves and the burrs, they ravish in front of the engraved mark, before the image appears evident (and often actually occurring) only the printed page gives the accomplished sense of the work. As happens for the negative of a photograph, and the film which does not roll at the correct speed in the projector, the matrix - it is permissible to use a term so limited, however exemplary, coming from the semantic structure of the mother word - is not the work: the work is exactly that page there, that piece of slightly damp paper which, with trepidation and enthusiasm, the engraver or the printer (often coincident in the same person) takes away from the felts with immense care after the passing of the roller which allows the pour off of the ink from the groove in the screen to the damp paper; the work is precisely that glossy or matt paper, of sepia tone or black, which the photographer processed from the moistening in the dark room and leaving to dry in the air because the images complete its formative process; the work is exactly those scenes in movement that in an arranged space (the screen) roll with the rhythms that the director has fixed in the place where it was edited.

There are not two films or two pieces of work (one made of copper and the other of paper; or one in a roll of negative film and the other positive on paper); there is one single piece of work, the one reproduced.

The authenticity of the piece of work is in its origin direct from the mould, under close observation (or at least the supervision) of the author. The chalcography in the twentieth century, which we have just closed, lived, like all genres, the two great revolutions that crossed the century; the initial one, like the revolution of the language research of a new word that translates the new sense of art; and the one that followed, datable to between the end of the 1950s to the 1960s, when art goes off the rails of tradition, and enters into the uneasy life and space of daily routine: no longer pictures, sculptures, drawings, but works, which often form a synthesis between the previous genres, sometimes overcoming, sometimes distorting.

If the linguistic revolution, that accompanies the post-impressionism aphasia, between the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the nineteenth, carve a small degree onto the chalcography (from Boccioni to Morandi, from Klinger to Picasso, to De Chirico, the great creators of the historical avant garde - at least of some of these - use the engraving with results that are sometimes extraordinary), the subject changes radically when we enter into contact with the so-called neo-avant-garde, those of the 1960s (in order to simplify matters). The breakdown is radical, as is said; new forms enter in direct play, from photography to video, from body art to land art all forms that very little can identify with the traditional mechanism of engraving, not only in the expressive procedure, but also in the results. In all of these artistic exhibitions we lack the entire engraving tradition. Starting with the “emotion when you (engravers) expose a small piece of rectangular paper that is still damp, delicately between the tips of the fingers, that has just come off the pressing section”. Who writes unfortunately does not have the pen of Paul Valery, whom with these words, almost a century ago (1933), referred to the appraised engravers as the “eager patient”: of course in the evolution of the art procedure, the chalcography maintained in a more complete way not so much the iconographic or mark level, always variable and always modified each time - until the abstract idea or the informal, but more the operative level. Maybe different shapes emerge, like the utilisation, almost reversed, of the techniques of the carborundum (closer to the wasting away of the informal); essentially, the printing of the copper screen remained unaltered; maybe the lithographic stone has disappeared, substituted by the pre-prepared screen, stronger, in actual fact, less soft in its results.

Today of course, the printer dedicates a lot of time, as did their predecessors 50 years or even a century ago.

Why is engraving not changing? In a certain sense, it could be said that, due to the closure in a “niche” by both the producer-artist on one side and the user-consumer on the other side, the engravers claim, in a more and more stubborn way, the close contact with tradition, they claim the respect of the procedure; and that even the explosive experience of the first half of the nineteenth century, which surely took place (for example, the utilisation of photographic or published reports in the heart of the engraved image), unlistened opportunities remained.

Every engraver asserts the totality within the latest mark carried out: maybe because “in the moment in which the artist is about to obtain a certain security, they realise that they have opened another field of enquiries where, everything that they were able to express up until that moment, they were able to express in a different manner” (so said, in an extraordinary way, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in his L’Oeil et l’Esprit, written in 1960, and edited by Gallimard in 1964).

Also in the crisis of the 1960s, when engraving suffered very few changes, and mostly just surface changes; that ancient art, secret and informal, like a written page, where the control of the duo man-eye, or the trio mind-man-eye remain closed in the small space of the paper or the screen print. The engraving offers itself in a closer dialogue between the author and the consumer, which come together with the lens in hand, in order to discover the secret of the ensemble, recovered in the subtle weave of the signs that fix the image in an unveiled form: the magic is expressed and takes shape. And in the simplicity of black and white we find the strength of the entire rainbow.

Maybe it is also necessary to go back to the observations, often quoted and nevertheless inevitable, of Baudelaire and Valery in order to understand the value and the consistence of this “niche” of authors. Baudelaire (Charles Baudelaire, Peintres et aquafortistes, in Le Boulevard, Paris, 14 September 1862 ; today in Scritti sull’arte, Turin, Einaudi, 1992) was maybe the first art scholar to have recognised that “not only does the etching seem to be done in order to magnify the individuality of the artist, but it would be somewhat difficult if its creator did not engrave his most hidden personality onto the screen”. Baudelaire’s statement brings us into contact with the emotional involvement of the artist in his work, ahead of the contemporaneity, identifying this suitable “necessity” in art that was always read as repetitive and superficial, a cold transcription of other people’s work, rare, too rare, where the authors themselves are compared to the “translators” (the so-called reproductive engravers).

With Baudelaire we don’t solely enter into the contemporaneity where the work expresses and does not represent, but in fact of the contemporaneity in which we include the coordinates which are not only valid in the initial season, of the aphasia and of the disruptiveness, between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth; from the contemporaneity of Baudelaire we also include the current day, dominated by the “communicative” component (advertising?) that exceeds that aesthetics (and with regards to communication and consumption Gillo Dorfles speaks in the “base” with which opens the first number, 1959, of the Azimuth: “Comunicazione” e “consumo” nell’arte d’oggi magazine). Few lines before the reflection quoted, the great poet noted that: “a portion of unpopularity corresponds to a consecration”.

In a non dissimilar way, Paul Valery (In a small speech to the engraver painters, delivered on 29th November 1933 and published in 1934 by the “Society of French engraver painters”; today in Scritti sull’arte, Milan, Tea, 1996) underlines how important the engraving is as it is “the art which is closest to the spirit” and therefore “the one which renders the maximum amount of our impressions or of our intentions with the minimum amount of sensitive means”. Continuing with his praise, and comparison, as is reminded above, between engraving and the written page (that goes without saying, poetry), Valery positively underlines that the engravers (and the poets) know how to communicate “with black and white, whereas nature does not extract anything. It doesn’t know how to do anything with some ink. It needs materials, which are literally endless. We (poets and etchers) however require very few things, and, if possible, a lot of spirit”.

The engraving is the result of hours of work and only finds its conclusion in the trepidation, in the intense emotion, when it is uncovered, “still damp, a small rectangular piece of paper just of the press section held delicately between the finger tips”: and the phrase, used at the beginning and used once again now, employs the underground connotation of the work, and in the creation, that appears even in the depth of the black, expresses the unparalleled joy of life.

Whatever without quotation marks we used at the beginning, comes to portray a different accent, concluding a reflection that presents the pieces of work of a group of young engravers, that find themselves in the class rooms in Urbino by chance; they, with the travelling exhibition, the book of art, this catalogue, the spreading of the work, the acceptance of the different poetics - the only threshold or limit is the quality, evaluated by themselves as a prerequisite - want to state the current validity of engraving: the “stylistic” classification in which each is placed is irrelevant; in this moment, for all of them, it is more important being together in the reality of the engraving with a piece of work that in the contemporary world expresses the aesthetic sense and the contradictions.

The youngsters that have created this exhibition are united by the love of engraving. They don’t identify themselves in a unique poetics or in a unique trend; each and every one of them has thought out over the years an individual artistic world, single and brought to life by an ancient and modern technique. Even the learning, the approach of engraving has occurred following personal routes; each one has understood how to engrave at a different school or academy, and all together, finding one another by chance in Urbino, they have discovered the desire to deepen a universe of marks and technique. Engraving has become the common denominator; the chalcography is the place through which they experiment the figures of the internal world. Without weighing the differences too much, but ascertaining that, in common, there is an involuntary agreement or tension towards the lumps which originate from the informal; lumps that know how to express, translate, call out to the depth of the black, make that picking on the surface of the only seemingly uniform engraved panel possible, in order to reach the depth. It is the surface (of the screen and of the sheet) that wants to be probed by means of the light, the light of the dark that imprisons the spiritual nature of each one metaphorically and underlines from within the chalcographic course of each.

A complex journey, which the participants wanted to follow on from the works of the “teachers”, in a kind of underlining of their dependence and of their freedom (a bridge one might say); it is the ideal “transition of the deponent”, that, in Urbino, refers to Bruscaglia, Castellani, … and …; a journey that in the light the anxiety or the sweetness of existence doesn’t enlighten, expresses the contradiction, expresses maybe that “divine mystery” which Alda Merini speaks about, that, with the aching, loud and truthful voice of poetry, underlines also “the pain of life”. The invitations are sent back to the teachers, who intervene with the word or with the manipulated photographic image, as is the case of Giuliano Grottini, or with the sign, a silographic sign that refers to the abstract gesture, but does not forget the outcome of a neo-naturalism which for a long time reacted on Italian soil, as did Alfredo Bartolomeoli. Two figures that indicate a tradition, a connection, and a point of interest between the generations.

Then come the youngsters: we would have liked to group them according to poetic similarity, even better than alphabetic order. However, the exiting from poetics, from the schemes and formulas invested all of the artists that have displayed themselves to the art since the 1970s; even our engravers are not inferior. And they move along routes, which are always similar with opinions that a stylistic interpretation would place in opposite fields, or notice each other’s differences, there, where the styles seem to meet one another. Returning to an alphabetic order is to indicate diversity, it is not ratification.

The light and the dark (we are not speaking of sombreness), in the images of Leonardo Bollini (San Marino 1982) seem to express cosmetic vision, a transcription of the reality of the world (and of life) read and deduced from the infinitely small (the fragile shell) and of the infinite cosmos, in which dark and light play real and symbolic roles at the same time.

The power of the mark, the strength of the black of the very young engraver (he’s only 22 years old), are remarkable (I was about to write extraordinary), generate space, without becoming an obstruction, but depth; and in this light, his image, among fantastic invention and adhesion to the subject in its own original structure, archetypical of the psyche and memory, becomes a metaphor of a vision built on the gesture, on the strength, of a condition, of a state of mind: but of real significance which does not imitate the life of the world, it creates one parallel, new in the poetic intensity, akin in the spiritual moods. Is it possible that it wasn’t like that, apart from the assumptions indicated?

 The artistic curriculum vitae of Angela Corti (Brescia 1969) presents some rich experience and differentiation of routes; in this process, the leading – not unique and not definitive, but characterising – to engraving forms a trace. Like a trace and clue comes from the patronage of the laboratory in Brera of Luce Delhove, who probably helped to discover the direct mark, the strength of the gesture which falls onto the screen, the vibration of the repeated stroke, that forces the eye to follow the lighting. No longer drawing from the external world, but maybe from the memory; no longer transcription of emotions, but a doubtful and unstable balance between pulsions and strictness.

From these statements comes her process in order to create the oxymoron, her strong movement and black vitality that overlooks everything, the underground swarm, white on white, of the pierced and tortured surfaces, almost transcribing in the orange peel of tired skin the secret (and vibrant) sense of the piece. Where the mark, in its superhuman silence, in its stretch as original and motiveless strength, gives shape, a sense, a sense of being.

To use different words in order to describe the title of a piece of work that appears in this catalogue (Quello che guardo, 2003), Serena De Maria (Naples 1976) seems to want to use the engraving in order to plunge herself into the reality that surrounds her, to pluck the fantastic face, the unwonted dimension, to gather the reality of alarm, by means of the modification of the point of view.

In the aesthetic journey of the art, a new look remains. From the screens, the reflection that starting with fuori-di-me refers to the emotional data in the back of the mind, to underline, imprint within the spirit the participation, even painful, to the existence: the parched trees (Una Vita) are not only a scenery annotation, but an emotional projection, the transcription of a mental itinerary that finds the symbolic sense of research in the strength of the black. And maybe, precisely in the panel where we started, in the probe into reality, interpreted from an unnatural angle, in the magical sense of a vision which looks at the incredibleness of the things taken for granted, emerges not only the individual feeling, but the metaphor of making art and of everyday behaviour, that the sure stroke writes with its pen inked with the intense black.

Between nature and symbols Massimo Gabanetti (Brescia 1972) bestirs himself. The nature returns, even unintentionally, among the marks that he drafts on the screen; it is a nature stripped of memory, sad in its appearance; when Gabanetti dwells upon the natural references in his reluctant engravings over time, he encounters emotions, worrying images (the dead sparrow, between Bartolini and the direct memory of a distant event).

Upon this linguistic scansion, the engraving inserts the necessity of the symbol: that is the symbol of the eye, which appears as an omen, a lumpy mark symbol, that comes from the informal lesson, placed in dialogue with the suggestive scansion of the iconic mark; it is a symbol of a glimmer of the object, that wanes on the screen and becomes a shape.

 A mixture which appears as a study of ways out and comes back to the tradition; to the cultural course between symbolism and neo-naturalism, Gabanetti adds the necessity of varying the procedure, of innovating the dictionary, aiming directly towards the object and the materials, unique iconographic reality capable of speaking with the informal: the encounter seems to inflame it, because it encases the restlessness of today in the ferocious contrasts.

Linda Grittini (Milan 1977) creates her own poetic world through some specific experiences that throw back a lot to the iconic culture of the last Lombard naturalism, so much so that the threadlike traces of an aniconic world, built solely with the strictness of the mark.

The home grown knowledge emerge and the poetic measure that find a meeting point in a revisited and reconstructed nature, encasing in its mind the disagreement, broken up, by means of the fragment which composite rhythm elates. The natural image does not represent the mulberry or the plane tree of the ancient filars that led to the estate; today everything, even the tree, is appearance, the simulation that the city encases in vitro, in an artificial environment, almost begging for its waste, in order to keep an idea of life to be transferred and passed on. The true life is in the restless tangle of the mark that no longer looks to imitate nature, but reinvents a different one, uneven and twisted, but also brighter; and in the repeated anxiety of the marks which seem to lose themselves in the blankness, becomes more loaded with internal vitality.

Barbara Martini (Brescia 1977) arrived over the years stressing her need to face the materials, the ink, the desired lumps through the acceleration and the iteration of the nero inciso. Martini abandoned the iconography, even if the oblivious memory reappears at times in the tangles of the marks and created the work on the “black marks-white area” connection. A connection built by means of the rhythmic scansion of the gestures, of the lumps, of the grooves that pass over the body of the representation, marking the black with more black, almost in making a new and unnatural brightness emerge.

To the sullen thickness of the background, Martini adds the last gesture, the stroke of the hand which roams freely, escaping from the casing, defining a strain with the precariousness of balance, always desired and always twisted. The theme of the memory, that knows the landscape of the mind, the theme of the unintentional settling. The swarming panels seem to reveal themselves as a result of the marks; the vitality is in the work, not from out side of it; metaphorically it is in the art and not the life.

Even in the mark of Simona Materi (Caserta 1971) a pre-stylistic memory remains; the graphic style, even the poetic choice, which probably came later, to encase, articulate, give a sense to the gesture, with cross references and recalls that go back to nature, read as archetype, background filigree, a swarm of shapes that come from the depths, and imprint themselves, white on white, on the surface of the page. This too is a way of exploring a different contrast, among the marks that come from emphasis, creating a rugged skin, almost a “skin” taken drawn from everyday life of existence, and the grooves which, picked with the black, vest the depth of the hollowness to discover the restlessness within.

It is the route through which il segno e la natura by Materi, neither imitation nor withdrawal, becomes a transfiguration which leaves the return to the individual intact and at the same time suggests a gesture that picks, almost by exorcising in the tangle and the movement, the uselessness of the product: only art can, in the endeavoured disarray, give a sense back to the things, call out to the silence that without allusions and vibrations seems to take one’s breath away.

Gesture, memory, iconography of existence, would be the terms used to describe the expressive journey taken by Raffaella Ravelli (Brescia 1971), whose tension of the mark is dominating, of a stroke that in its stretch allows the shapes, figures and strength of the gesture to emerge.

It’s a kind of journey in the primeval chaos, that of Ravelli, a summoning of the original complexness, that from the empty space manages to find shapes and figures in the monstrous appearance. Art cannot do anything but notice the life from the bottom threshold of the cavern, without being able to enter; the contradiction becomes the underground thread of the journey without docking, of a wander around that at times occupies the entire space in the vacant horror: the marks approach each other, leaving glimmers, stating the recovery of nature and psyche. The image becomes an expressive component of the search to tell about life, give a shape, a story, to the emotion. In this direction, the recovery of the marks of the expressive tradition of the post-war aniconic and of the summoning experience of authors such as Sutherland, who knew how to read nature like a complex metamorphosis; the dawn of Gregorio Samsa comes into view in the filtering light that the black allows to escape.

The world of Carmela Salemi (Rosolini 1963) appears to be linkable. A world based on the rhythmic scansions of the tale, without wanting to say anything, a world that entrusts the series, the matching of different dimensions, that bring back the portrayed universe to the contrast between mark, light and restlessness of the deep black.

It is the evocations, allusions that put back to a contact with the real world once again, gathered in their fragments, as in the glimmer of light that cuts across the harmonious evenness of the black of the enclosure. In this way, through the rhythm between the parts of the composition Salemi tells of her experience, her tension, even her vitality which symbolically appears in the egg-shapes emanating brightness. A vitality sometimes denied but nonetheless capable of supporting the strain of the composition that unfolds at the end like an accolade of the contradiction. In art, the task of exploring, not that more joyful one of reciting, the task of proceeding for attempts (and mistakes), rather than that of the pleased one of embellishing with a ray of grey of everyday life.

Barbara Zavodnik (Lubiana 1975) locks in her own expressive tension with her preference for the enormously lengthened colour and shape of the panel. She burnt the bridges with history and even with the iconic memory, in order to entrust her expressiveness of the marks, the corrosion that acid provokes on the screen, the shapelessness that seems to be an integral part of the actual structure of the panel, without an origin, as if it existed outside of time, since eternity, ceased in its locked casing.

In reality, Zavodnik makes the majority of her research into the corrosion, raising the overall tone of the image; right on the shapelessness, on the indefinite without icons that stretch out and at the same time coagulate, on the borders that shatter and jag, as if the panel was nothing but the unintentional result of time, with its agents, on metal. The patient work, the discomfort of the unfinished, all contributes into giving the images of the Slovene chalcographic engraver a kind of emotional redundancy, that from her research forms the synthesis and the conclusion of the level of pure emotion.

Brescia, February 2004

by Giuliano Santini
A PLACE WHERE HISTORY IS CREATED

It takes courage to realise an exhibition entirely made up of a period of serious financial straits in the field of culture. To a greater degree therefore, this initiative is a dynamic indication of hope: some youngsters, without waiting for contributions from public institutes, have taken the initiative, started intellectual and creative personal resources and have created this exhibition. They have done all this too with bold dignity, risking the use of their own imagery, once hard and difficult, but free from backing down to the illusion of the market, that points towards imagery offering a lessened impact on the public.

For who – like us – has ever undertaken an informative adventure, giving new life to the international courses for artistic engraving in Urbino, it is gratifying to observe the youngsters who, following these courses, met each other in the splendid Francesco courtyard of Giorgio Martini, formed a strong friendship, shared mutual respect and generated an exhibition of their elaborated graphics. When we started to promote the courses, the main desire was exactly that of favouring meetings and initiatives that would have the ducal city as origin centre. However, after three years of exhibitive activity, that has seen leaders in Italy and abroad, now we realise an exhibition that really involves us only in reflection: the reality has happily exceeded every expectation.

The fact that it is the youngsters that are promoting this is another element of satisfaction, which demonstrates that the ancient and ‘old’ techniques of engraving still captivate the new generations because it responds to the necessity of manipulating the subject.

For us coming from studies in Urbino, it is even more significant that among these artists coming from all over the world, there are some that are studying at the Art Institute of the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino. They worked together with the guests, got to know the different experiences, got involved in friendships, silently and incisively testifying how to welcome someone who comes from “outside”. The manner in which the exhibition will display their engravings to the public also calls for merit: the way in which they have thought and think the different spaces that meet together also confirms the necessity of a different relationship with the same artistic stamp. Its visual application cannot be other than to inform itself with the new techniques and expressive necessity that change each other over time. It is necessary to enter into greater contact with the work, even through the smells, and also through the emphasis; it is necessary to relate it with the space and its elements, involving it with other subjects and techniques, from those more traditional methods (painting, sculpture) to those that until only a few years ago would have been referred to as futuristic (computer-aided technology).

 These problems are alive in the educational activity of the Urbino International Centre for Artistic engraving, in spite of the fact that graphics is taught in the classic manner: an engraving is in itself definition only and exclusively a chalcography, a xylograph or lithograph. The use of the original print, instead, opens another horizon and starts another story that runs on the fine line of tradition and even curiously looks at every possible innovation, wishing that the technical-formal troubles do not lose the typical creative freshness of the new art generations.