Colours become words. Words turn back into colours.
Layered paintings take up the colours described by Giovanni Testori in his book "Il gran teatro montano. Saggi su Gaudenzio Ferrari", Edizioni Medusa, Milan 2010 (first edition Feltrinelli, Milan 1965)
Gaudenzio and Tanzio’s colours become Testori and then become Morganti.
I started from the word rather than the colour.
I let myself be transported from the word towards a colour, one layer after another.
I go towards pink, a pink substance: a pigment that becomes flesh.
Giovanni Testori on Gaudenzio Ferrari "Il gran teatro Montano" Pag. 138-139:
"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..."
Giovanni Testori on Tanzio da Varallo "Il Gran Teatro Montano" pag. 165-166:
"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..."
(Written in 2014. Modified in 2019)
