HOUSE OF THE WRITER GIOVANNI TESTORI 

 

Between words and material: correlations with "Il gran teatro montano" 

All of Testori’s words (in italics in the text) come from the book: 

Il gran teatro montano. Saggi su Gaudenzio Ferrari, Giovanni Testori, Edizioni Medusa, Milan 2010 (first edition Feltrinelli, Milan 1965)

 

Which come first, the words or the colours?

Which comes first, Testori’s text or my work?

I embarked on this project after reading the book "Il gran teatro montano". 

His voice led me into a frame of mind. And this frame of mind, this climate, corresponded to a sense of things that is also part of my procedure, my way of thinking and how I inhabit a work.

All of this intense activity springs from the correlation between words and works, between words and colours, stimulated by identifying with the text.

Testori’s words, written to describe Gaudenzio Ferrari’s work at the Sacro Monte di Varallo Sesia, were subsequently superimposed onto my painting.

The words are about Gaudenzio Ferrari’s work, which is not present, but is evoked through Testori’s words.

There is Gaudenzio Ferrari’s work, there is Testori talking about Gaudenzio, there is my painting, and there is me using Testori’s words that describe Gaudenzio to describe my work.

On the one hand it is as though Testori had given me the language to say something about my work, and on the other it is as though I were talking through my works on behalf of Testori.

In some cases his words triggered a process, drawing out potential new works; in other cases the works already existed and it was almost as though Testori’s words knew them as they corresponded so perfectly.

I came up with the idea of the subtitle in order to put my painting in relation to Testori’s words: a pivot, a crossroads between two correlating ways of feeling. 

The subtitle became an integral part of the work.

I give the work a title whilst the subtitle is a quote from "Il gran teatro montano".

The seven subtitles for the eight works draw one into a sense of things.

The meeting point lies in the relationship between the word and the painting, between word and colour, between word and material, between his and my way of understanding the material.

First of all there is the material: material-life; material-word; material-colour. That’s where the word comes from, that’s where the colour comes from. A substance becomes a word, which becomes a painting. 

The work continues via the relation with the thing. Awareness comes through material. It remains. It stays inside a process, a movement that once activated leads to a permeable relationship with the material, correlating with the physical entity.

"... one has the impression of proceeding by fumbling around..." (p. 123)

The material of painting: as Testori says, that which comes from the heart rather than the intellect.

"... loving a material so much that you make it converge with the flesh... is no less significant... than reducing the material to the light of the mind..." (p. 112)

"...I think it only right to respond that rather than... the idea of the form governing the feelings of the heart, in this case it is the heart that governs the rationale of the form and every idea that can spring from it..." (p. 101)

"...I aim to talk about pigment and about material fabric; the grain of a warm and lucent colour; reverberations of snow on trembling posies; and a large waning moon shining from the slopes on the procession that slowly shuffles along, a little surprised and somewhat lazily indolent and happy. But the colour of that grain; that material so consumed by caresses and sighs..." (p. 199)

A coloured material, not a cover or a coat, but an entity made of colour that takes up its space, that extends, that takes shape. A substance that, even if it is extremely thin, occupies a space. 

I plunge my hands inside and then I begin to spread: "... one feels the material of the colours between one’s hands..."; "... the image of his hands buried in the earth.", "... the deepest plunge and material trepidation..." (p. 113)

 

THE WORKS:

"PRENDERE IL VOLO" (TAKING FLIGHT)

"...here it seems caught... halfway, on the verge of coming away from the wall and taking on a three-dimensional body..."

Venice, 2012 

Diptych:

1- "Prendere il volo" (Taking Flight):

Oil on 5 aluminium sheets, long steel pins

50 x 65 x 30 cm circa

2- "Slittamenti" (Slippages):

Oil on 5 sheets of paper, steel pins

50 x 65 cm

 

How to make a painting three-dimensional?

How to occupy the space?

Five layers of paint, each on a separate surface.

The layers slip away, they move, they are out of axis.

A painting that develops three-dimensionally, coming away from the wall towards us.

"...and yet made of painting, a painted relief, a full sculpture: here it seems caught... halfway, on the verge of coming away from the wall and taking on a three-dimensional body..." (p. 174)

"... here, in the 'gruppo dello spiritello', the object assumes not only the complete and independent power of an actual relief, but, more importantly, rather than moving within the dimensional limits of the painted wall, it goes beyond the wall and comes into direct contact with the viewer; it goes to meet them..." (p. 195)

"...it detaches from the wall..." (p. 203)

 

 

"ROSA TESTORI" (TESTORI ROSE)

"...one feels the material of the colours in one’s hands..."

20 pieces of paper

Venice, 2012

Oil pastels and oil stick on paper, steel pins 

Each piece of paper 23x30.5 cm

 

20 pieces of paper that start with an initial layer of red inspired by the red rose dedicated to the writer and which grows in his garden.

 

"SEDIMENTAZIONE PER TESTORI. 

COLORI DIVENTANO PAROLE. PAROLE RITORNANO COLORI" (SEDIMENTATION FOR TESTORI: COLOURS BECOME WORDS, WORDS TURN BACK INTO COLOURS)

Testori on Gaudenzio Ferrari: "Those humid greens of dew. Those woody browns. Those yellows somewhere between gold and straw. And above all those pinks. Unutterable colour. Pinks of every human gradation, the most imperceptible; the infinitesimal: cheeks; foreheads, eyelids; hands. Flesh. That’s what it is and is nothing other than this: flesh..."  

Testori on Tanzio da Varallo: "Tanzio constantly has the colours of his valley in front of him, though not so much their visual quality as their material substance. The whites of the glaciers; the blues and pinks of the snow; the blacks of the precipices (and of the blackbirds when they suddenly flutter out of the underbrush and fly away); the rocks; the shrubs that grow there, forgotten, as if out of desperation; the slender trunks; the bark; the deer hide; the leather of the packsaddles; the bowls; the bread; the twigs; the wood of the huts and the tables; the straw; the hay; the kneecaps; the teeth; the fingers; the eyes; the eyes that stare and scrutinise, fear and invoke, protest and query. And then, always and forever, some mountain flowers: edelweiss; columbine; lily; cardoon; cyclamen.

Does that purple, which is no longer just the purple of penitence as it is in Cerano’s work, come from there, from the cyclamens? Of course it comes from there, like a presentiment of disaster or bloodshed, and we have seen it.

As you can see, the catalogue of colours has gradually become a catalogue of things...." 

Diptych: "Sedimentazione 7, Venezia 2011" (Sedimentation 7, Venice 2011) and "Sedimentazione 8, Venezia 2011" (Sedimentation 8, Venice 2011)

Oil on canvas

Each painting 120x120 cm

 

Two paintings inspired by Giovanni Testori’s words on Gaudenzio Ferrari and Tanzio da Varallo.

Gaudenzio and Tanzio’s colours become Testori and then they become Morganti. 

I start with the word rather than the colour, which is what I did for the work at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in 2008.

I let the word transport me towards a colour, one layer after another.

I go towards pink, a pink substance. A pigment that becomes flesh. 

"... loving a material so much that you make it converge with the flesh... is no less significant... than reducing the material to the light of the mind..." (p.108)

 

 

 

"STRATIFICAZIONE CON RODOCROSITE (ROSA E ROSA)" (STRATIFICATION WITH RHODOCHROSITE (PINK AND PINK))

"...(il Rosa è là, dietro, coperto di ghiacci e di nevi)!... " (the rose is there, at the back, covered in ice and snow)

Venice, 2012

Plasticine, wood, oil, rhodochrosite

11.5 x 34 x 22cm

 

More pink. While I am working on the Testori diptych, even the Plasticine surface is permeated with this colour.

A layered painting: layers of Plasticine, of material-colour spread over the period of about a year. A fragment of painting, placed next to a piece of rhodochrosite.

The time of the painting, a human time, and the time of life in relation to geological time: two inexorably long times.

"... why on earth should giving shape to an impasto of earth according to your heartbeats be less dignified than giving shape to subjects of the intellect?..." (p.112)

"... the material is so dense here..." (p.116)

 

"SEZIONE NEL TRAVERTINO" (SECTION IN TRAVERTINE)

"... when it touches on the sublime, painting will always be mindful and indeed full of its pliability; in other words, of its human clay; almost as though the painting were entering fully the womb of the sculptures..."

Polyptych in 6 parts 

Venice, 2012 

Travertine, Plasticene, steel supports 

Each part 26x18x2 cm

 

Paintings consisting of layers of sectioned Plasticene. Parts, fragments of paint, squeeze and weave into the interstices, into the stone, into the travertine.

"...Like all geniuses who are not humanistic but human, Gaudenzio needs to feel and move completely inside the material. Now what material is more docile, more solicitous than stone, terracotta and lime? The hand touches it and sinks into it and its caresses create a breath, a palpitation, a shape..." (p. 108)

 

"DIARI" (DIARIES)

"... the footstep of existence will always have a faithful rhythm..." 

Diario 38: Venezia, giugno - dicembre 2011 (Diary 38: Venice, June - December 2011)

Oil on wood

10x100cm

Diario 39: Venezia, dicembre 2011 – aprile 2012 (Diary 39: Venice, December 2011 – April 2012) 

Oil on wood

10x100cm

Diario 40: Venezia, aprile – settembre 2012 (Diary 40: Venice, April – September 2012)

Oil on wood

10x100cm

 

One colour a day: I spread this colour on a canvas every day and I keep a note of it in my diary. It is a diary of colours rather than words. The diary shows all the colours that have been inside my space during a certain arc of time.

For the exhibition, here are the three diaries painted from July 2011 to September 2012 during the time I worked with Testori’s text.

 

"QUADRO INFINITO" (INFINITE PAINTING)

"... the material of the art being seeped into and identified with the material of life, and of this in that, in an exchange that has the colour of human breath, makes it a unique and singular material; tangle; chain; embrace?..." 

Photo: Francesco Allegretto

Painting:

Venezia, 5 dicembre 2006 - (in progress) (Venice, 5 December 2006 - (in progress)) 

Oil on canvas

DIMENSIONS on12.9.2012: 

HEIGHT: 

Left 52.5 cm (without drop); 56 cm (with drop)

Centre 52.5 cm (without drop); 53.3 cm (with drop)

Right 52.7 cm (without drop); 54.9 cm (with drop)

WIDTH: 

Top 41.9 cm

Centre 41.6 cm

Bottom 41.9 cm

DEPTH:

Top left 4.9 cm

Top right 4.3 cm

Centre left 4.2 cm

Centre right 4.0 cm

Bottom left 4.3 cm

Bottom right 4.0 cm

WEIGHT on 12.9.2012:

3.0 kg

 

Every day since 2006 the same colour that is spread on a canvas and in the diary is also put on the “infinite painting”. Each subsequent layer cancels out the preceding colour. To date, the canvas has thickened by about 2 cm and broadened by about 1 cm on each side. It has put on about 2 kg.

"... here, where a certain atavistic weight of sentiments weighs on the shoulders and makes these people so inevitably attracted and gravitated to the earth..." (p. 122)

The painting is exhibited in the form of a photographic reproduction that catches the moment I finished working on the pieces for this exhibition.

(Written in 2013)