Senago, Villa San Carlo Borromeo, 22nd August 1998
You were born in Bologna. Were you the first child?
The second. My sister was the first, with a big age difference,
being thirteen years older than me. Let's say I was a mistake...
A mistake?
A mistake in time!
That is, your parents weren't expecting...
No, they weren't.
But they were happy, afterwards.
I think so, I hope so for their sake!
Both parents were in the family. what did your father do?
Mechanical engineering.
On his own?
No, for other people. He worked in a firm, he was the boss practically...
He was responsible for that sector. And what about your mother?
She was a housewife.
Did your sister study?
She did study, not an awful lot... she got a diploma in accounting. She worked for a while...
Until she found a husband.
She got married.
During the war, you were at primary school. Were you and your family evacuated?
To a little town, Marrano, some ten kilometres from Bologna. Today I ask myself why they chose that town, because there was an ammunition depot two hundred metres away from our house.
So, it wasn't even such a safe place! However, the family moved there and I couldn't argue.
In Marano, you attended primary school.
I was there for the third or fourth year of primary school, I don't remember exactly.
I remember there were nuns.
Don't you remember anything of primary school?
Not really.
Did they teach drawing?
Yes, but it wasn't...
It wasn't much, at the time... And then?
I went to junior high school.
Was there an entrance examination?
Yes, there was.
And they taught drawing there.
Yes, they did. I remember there were always disagreements with the drawing teacher.
Was it a man or a woman?
A man, but we didn't get along. He appreciated/realised? the fact I could already draw - I've always drawn...
At primary school you were already drawing, without any schooling...
I drew by myself at home. It was something I used to like doing, a way of passing the time.
This teacher appreciated/realised? the fact I could draw already, but he imposed rules on me that
I didn't accept gladly; so, there were disagreements, I remember. I've had disagreements with teachers at all levels, right up to the academy of fine arts.
At junior high school, were the only disagreements you had those with the art teacher?
Yes, they were.
There was also Latin.
Not that I was very good at it. I've always had problems with scientific subjects. With mathematics, for instance.
Which subjects were you very good at at junior high school? Drawing, naturally...
...I was good at Italian and history, as well.
Did you have a very simple or a verbose style in Italian?
No, always simple. It's a characteristic I have always kept.
Have you ever kept any diaries?
No, I haven't.
Did you make any albums of your drawings?
Yes, I've always done a lot of drawings.
That you threw away afterwards...
Yes, that's right.
Or was any drawing of inspiration to you, later on?
No.
They were just for practice, then you threw them away.
Yes, they were drawings I did purely for pleasure, then they would get lost.
At junior high school, did you see any sign of your interest in painting specifically?
Not at that stage.
What did you think you would do?
The period at junior high school was a difficult one, because my father died.
Ion 1947 you were already in the third year of junior high school.
I was in the second year.
What did your father die of?
A tumour.
Suddenly, discovered at the last minute?
It was a question of months.
He hadn't noticed it, and when he had the tests done, they weren't able to operate, was that it?
They did operate, but in those years things were drastic. They still are now, but then, they were even more so. When my father died, my sister had already married and my mother didn't have any job whatsoever, so there were a few problems at home. I started doing a few odd jobs in the afternoons. I was an errand-boy. First in a clothes shop, then at Gondrand's, the shipping company...
Like many other youngsters, in those days.
So, I had to repeat a year, on account of my afternoon jobs...
Was it the third year of school you missed?
The second. I had to leave, as soon as my dad died. Then I took my junior high school leaving examination. I prepared for it privately.
Ah, for a couple of years you left..
Yes, I had enrolled, but I didn't attend any lessons. I did the leaving school examinations, then the admittance examination for the "Liceo" specialising in art subjects.
That contrast with the art-master was in first year Secondary school.
As I say, it was a very limited contrast. He would ask me to formulate the drawing in a certain way, while I was for having more freedom. These are small things, really.
But was this teacher good?
Not really.
How did the leaving school examination go?
Rather well.
When did you start thinking of registering at the Art "Liceo"? Was it because of your father's sudden death that you later registered for artistic subjects instead of classical studies?
At the time, when I was running those afternoon errands, I met a lady that had a "trattoria", an eating joint. She started to like me, and she told me her brother had a private drawing school,
called Accademia Regazzi, from the name of the school's owner, the lady's brother. Seeing that
I was always drawing, one day the lady said to me: "My brother has a school, I'll talk to him and we'll see". In fact, I did go to this teacher, I brought a few drawings and, after having seen them,
he said: "In my opinion, you should have an artistic instruction".
So, some advice.
Yes, and since he was aware of my family situation - that I didn't have any money and so on - he admitted me gratituously into the school.
Was it a private school?
Private. Everybody paid. He trained for both the art "Liceo" and the school leaving-examination.
He trained me first for the admittance to the "Liceo", which I actually attended, afterwards. "Liceo" specialised in art subjects. I attended it for a year...
And in the meantime you had to work.
Yes. The following year I passed on to the school of Art, because I thought it would give me some working outlets.
Or was it because the Liceo was more difficult?
No, no.
Did the school of Art have the same value?
Yes, but it was more specifically directed towards a working activity. My idea was that of advertising graphics. At the time, it was what interested me, to the point of doing little jobs for a graphic studio I used to go to.
These weren't extemporaneous jobs any more, or did you go on with both of them?
With both of them. I stayed at Gondrand's for a while, then I worked with these graphics.
So, you didn't go to school.
I did both things. In the afternoon, maybe I'd go and do these little jobs.
Was it an important graphic studio?
Rather important, in that there were two associates...
Has this graphic studio had a future?
One of the two did drawings for "Grand Hotel". The other one followed actual advertising graphics more. Afterwards, the studio, they closed it, one associate went to Rome, the other to Milan.
How much did your job last, there?
A bit less than a year.
We're in 1950.
'50, '51, those years. At that point, I decided I had to make a choice, and the choice was Painting.
I started attending courses on a regular basis, I was already making pictures, I had started exposing.
Did you start without a master?
Yes.
For the fact that you knew how to draw.
Yes.
Drawing, for you, has been the basis.
Yes, it has.
Even without the rules of that first year Secondary school...
Yes. The only teacher I do recognise has been Regazzi. He was very good as a drawer and as a water-colourist. It was he that taught me the use of water-colour, pencil, drawing.
He was the first master. Then, you start exposing.
Yes, at eighteen years old, in 1952.
After ending the job with the graphic studio, you decide to do painting and you do painting. You finish school...
No, I finished school afterwards. I did both things simultaneously, on account of reasons...
On account of life reasons.
Yes, because I had to work. I did a bit of school and a bit of work that would consent me to go on. Painting in itself, I started in 1952. During that year, I started painting pictures and began to expose in some local exhibition, in Bologna and in the province.
Has there been a new master?
No, the new master came afterwards, when I'd already started exposing. I'd entered the art academy.
You finished art school in 1953...
I didn't finish art school, I left it in 1953. While I suspended the "Liceo", then I went back again.
I gave the leaving school examination in 1956, as a privatist, when I was already active as a painter. I had already entered the Academy in 1955.
Could you register without having done the "Liceo"?
At the time, an admittance exam was enough.
You entered the Academy, you finished the "Liceo" in 1956, did you finish the Academy?
Yes, in 1959. I wouldn't have entered the Academy, if it hadn't been for the fact that in Bologna there was an institution called Collegio Venturoli that assigned young artists places where to paint and a scolarship.
Was it a public college or a private one?
A private college that gave, periodically, scolarships, and put an atelier and a monthly allowance
at the disposal of young artists that were registered at the Academy and had been born in Bologna. Having come to know this, I entered the Academy and, the following year, I sent an application for the scolarship, that I naturally managed to obtain. I had a big and beautiful studio, that I'll regret for the rest of my life, for five years, until 1961, when I came back fron Paris and had to leave it. I also had a monthly allowance, that consented me a few little purchases: canvases, colours...
I entered the Academy only for this reason. There, I met Virgilio Guidi, that has been my teacher not only for Painting in itself, but also a life teacher, in a more ample sense.
Was he a wise man?
Yes, in this sense.
Did he give you any advice?
Yes, he gave me some advice, he was very close to me.
Have you remained in contact with Regazzi?
From Regazzi I apprehended the technique, while Guidi showed me how an artist lives.
Relations, critics, galleries...
Yes. I'm very grateful towards Guidi, because with me he had an almost fatherly relationship.
At the Art academy we were a hundred and fifty boys and I would go and play cards, or eat, most of the time. It wasn't something he would do with everybody: towards me, he had a rather particular attitude...
Was it because he recognised that you were good or was it because...
Probably, yes. I made friends with his daughter, there was, in short,a nearly friendly relationship, even though I've always called him "master". We saw each other a lot. Guidi, who was Roman,lived in Venice, I went there often, in that period.And then, these things were made concrete by the presentation of my first personal exhibition, in Venice, mostly thanks to him. Anyhow, I am convinced that the years passed at school have been of no consequence to my work and my choices. I have always been intolerant with the teachers I had. All my schooling, practically, occurred out of school.
Wasn't there any conflict with your father?
No, there wasn't.
You say you were intolerant, but not towards Regazzi or Guidi.
No, not towards these two persons, I wasn't.
You weren't intolerant towards everybody.
My intolerance was directed towards the school institution, surely not towards those few people, specifically two, with which I had good relationships. For instance, one of the teachers with whom there were rather heavy contrasts had a Nineteenth century preparation; according to him, the Impressionists were too avantgarde and we had to beware of them!
Where did he teach?
At the school of Art. He was quite a well-known artist, his name was Arnaldo Gentili. He asserted that the impressionists shouldn't be looked at because they were too avantgarde. For a young man in the necessity of doing new things, contrasts would arise naturally. As for me, I made my discoveries: in Bologna there was the American library, where I would often go to, There were many Art magazines, too, and there I discovered contemporary artists. There I discovered Pollock, Miro', Picasso...
And Marc Rothko?
No, also because in those years Rothko hadn't yet started doing the things I got interested in afterwards. And so, I started experimenting the things I saw reproduced.
At the Usis library.
From 1952, for a couple of years, I would go to this library, until they closed it. Naturally, they were all in English,a language I did not know, but I looked at the images.Certain things were translated, besides; for instance, I discovered T. S. Eliot there, in a book that had the translation and the original text opposite. In those years, I read many novels, many stories, I was curious.
Which ones?
I read all contemporary American litterature through Pavese, for instance. I liked Nineteenth century French litterature, that I read almost completely.
In Italian?
Yes.
Did you read in Italian, because you hadn't had the chance to study languages?
No, they didn't teach languages in Art schools. I went to Paris,for the first time, in 1954. I stayed there for a month,a month and a half. I was alone, completely.
How did you get the chance to go to Paris?
It was my idea, to see the museums. I was totally on my own, so I had to learn a few words.
There were rather important exhibitions, I remember, for instance, an exhibition of geometricals at the Musèe de la Ville. And, naturally, I saw the Louvre. I stayed inside the museum for three or four days, I saw practically everything. I returned to Paris in 1956, after having stayed in Venice. With the collegio Venturoli scholarship, they organised a prize-trip and sent us to Paris for a week. On that occasion, I visited the private galleries. I had the chance to see things that confirmed my working interests, in those times. I remember Georges Mathieu, for instance, I remember Jean Fautrier, seen in that period. There was the Stadler gallery that worked on these artists a lot. Stadler, the gallery's financer, was connected to Michel Tapie, the critic that wrote that fundamental text on informal art, Art Autre, in 1952. That was my second time in Paris. I liked the scene. So I started thinking I could do some exhibitions and I put myself in contact with some galleries. The first available to exhibit my work was the Palmès gallery, in 1957. On that occasion...
Wasn't Guidi useful to you for this exhibition?
No, Guidi's always had a market limited to Italy, even if he was brought abroad, a few times.
There, I met Jean Buret, who worked as a critic for the "Paris Jour" daily, owned by DelDuca.He told me he'd seen some things of mine in Turin, in the gallery of Luigi Carluccio, critic of the "Stampa" daily, and that he'd liked them. He came, in fact, to the exhibition and made the review for his newspaper. I stopped only for a few days, on that occasion, and I didn't get the chance to meet many people. Successively, I put myself in contact with a lady, a nuclear engineer, owner of a gallery called the Antipoète, that worked in a rather interesting way. Her gallery wasn't simply a place for exhibitions, it was a kind of lounge for artists, where many people passed. For instance, she introduced me to Rilke's last companion, a very old lady that often visited the gallery. Many people would pass by; Carlo Sergio Signori, an Italian sculptor that lived in Paris since the years of antifascism, when he had been forced to leave Italy. I met him there.
Has Signori been important to you?
No, it was an extemporary acquaintance. In Paris I did not make any important encounters, none that determined anything for me. The next year, I won the scholarship and I returned. In Paris, the only contact I had - apart from Gianni Bertini, an Italian artist whom I had a great association with - was with a gallery that had a rather interesting activity. The same where Christo had his first exhibition.
Christo, he participated to our New York congress of 1981.
Christo had the first collective exhibition, in fact, in this little gallery in rue de Vaugirard, run by the mother of a critic called Jean-Jacques Leveque, whom we had a great relationship with.
He invited me to his house, sometimes, on Sunday afternoons, for little parties. There, I met artists and critics. it was 1961.
So, you went to Paris with a scholarship of the French government and you stayed there from 1960 to 1962.
I was continuously looking for a gallery, a merchant. In 1960, I exhibited in Milan, in the Brera district, in a gallery called Prisma. The person in charge of the gallery said: "Why don'tyou move to Milan?", but I always had the idea of going to Paris,a city that,in my opinion, could offer me more. Instead, I was mistaken.
So, with Guidi the relationship has...
With Guidi the relationship has continued, even if, naturally, with no interlacing.
Always as a life teacher. Didn't you have any other teachers, after Guidi?
No, I didn't.
From Venice to Paris, from 1952 to 1960, what's going on in Italy?
I happen to ask an American, that had the Schneider gallery, in Rome, in flight Mignanelli, right under De Chirico's house, if I could do an exhibition. I meet him in Venice, he tells me he agrees. The exhibition, we're at the beginning of 1957, goes well, not very well, but it's visited a lot.
For instance, I find Guttuso, that I had met in Venice, at the Biennial exhibition of Modern Art.
In Venice, the year before, there had been some people from Bologna, naturally. There was Francesco Arcangeli, that was at the time an official critic for the "Europeo" monthly, he introducedmeto Roberto Longhi, commissioner for the Biennial exhibition. Roberto Longhi congratulated himself with me, but only in a very general manner, while Guttuso, who was with him, was very warm, he told me that he'd fought for my work, it interested him very much. In short, he congratulated himself a lot. The next year, in Rome, he came to see my exhtibition at the Schneider gallery, and he congratulated himself again with me. Palma Bucarelli, who was already director of the Modern Art gallery of Rome, came too, but she didn't count anything...
And didn't congratulate herself...
She did congratulate herself, but very generally.
Differently from Guttuso.
Yes, differently from Guttuso. In that year, 1957, there wasa sort of invasion ofPadanians in Rome.Irememberthata journalist-critic, Claudio Savonuzzi, who wroteforthe "Illustrazione Italiana" and the "Resto del Carlino" daily and that would have become the correspondent for the Italianstate television from Paris - a friend, besides, with whom I'd beento Paris - wrote an article entitled
"The Adda River Defeated the Sea. The Adda (the work of the Padanians, of Ennio Morlotti, of these people, that was defined neonaturalism) would defeat the sea of Antibes and the sea of Picasso. And there were various exhibitions, in Rome, of artists from the Emilia Romagna and Lombardy regions. For instance, the " La Salita Liverani" gallery had Sergio Vacchi's exhibition nearly at the same time as mine. Palma Bucarelli did not like these things very much, because she was for a more rigid, more geometrical kind of painting. After the Rome exhibition, I contacted Florence's Numero gallery and I exhibited there. With the Numero gallery I worked from 1958 to 1960; then,
when I went to Paris, we interrupted our relationship. In those two, three years, we made a lot of collective exhibitions around Italy and abroad.
What was the gallerist called?
Fiamma Vigo. Hers was a Tuscanian family which had moved to Argentina and she had come back to Florence. She sold me many things, she put me in contact with many collectionists of the area,
we did a decent job.
So, until 1958 you exhibited in Paris, Venice, Rome, Bologna.
No, not in Bologna. My first exhibition in Bologna was in 1963.
You took part in collective exhibitions with Florence's Numero gallery.
With the Numero Group. We were a group of artists, and Fiamma Vigo had contacts in Europe:
in Spain, in Switzerland, in Germany, in France.
And in New York?
In New York the exhibition was organised by the Pesaro Segnapassi gallery.
That you worked with in which years?
From 1965 to 1971. Afterwards, the collaboration was interrupted; the main reason was that the proprietor and manager, a psychiatric medical doctor, had many professional commitments,
he worked in hospital and couldn't make it...
What was his name?
Renato Cocchi. He was also known as medical doctor; it seems like he'd found a cure to disintoxicate drug addicts. He's a very vivacious and active person, he also took part in some radio programs.
So the important galleries for you have been the Numero of Florence and the Segnapassi of Pesaro.
Yes.
Why was it called the Segnapassi?
It should be the Italian translation for pace-maker! The gallery still exists, but it changed management: it was taken over by a lady, a sort of financing associate, who completely changed the activity.
So, in Paris between 1960 and 1962 you didn't find an actual interlocutor, nor a master to collaborate with, something difficul if not impossible, nor a gallerist or a merchant. So when your scholarship was over...
When my scholarship was over, I stayed on another year, because since I had done some advertising activity in Bologna, for Buton, I had...
So did your advertising graphics activity continue, every now and then?
Yes, I stayed for around a year and a half with Buton, before going to France.
And then?
Since I've come back from Paris, there's been teaching.
But did you meet some master, see some work, some important exhibition between 1960 and 1962?
I saw Robert Rauschenberg's first European exhibition, for instance, the one that would have won the Venice Biennial exhibition of Modern Art in 1964.That was the year of the Biennial's American occupation.
What do you mean by "occupation"?
It had become the Biennial exhibition of pop art.
For a year. But before getting to occupy the Biennial,popart had to labour to get recognised.
Yes, that exhibition had been Paris's important happening, in those years. Then, I often visited many artists like, for instance, two Greek artist friends. One was called Nikos Kessanlis. We had become friends in Italy, because he also was part of the Numero group; he had a contract with Gaspare del Corso, the Roman gallerist that had launched Burri. Afterwards, he moved to Paris where I met him again, the following year. He had bought a joiner's shop and restructured it. He kept the first floor to himself and rented me the first floor. Another Greek we had become friends with, that had lived in Rome during the Fifties and then moved to Paris, was Vlassis Caniaris, a great artist. I found both of them again at the Venice Biennial Art exhibition, eight years ago, in the Greek pavilion: they were the two artists that represented Greece.
Did they go back to Greece?
Yes. One teaches at the Academy, the other at the Faculty of Architecture.
There was friendship, collaboration, exchange of ideas with them.
A nearly daily habit. Then I met Gianni Bertini, we would meet him a lot too, in Paris. He had a studio where all Italian artists passed by. Enrico Baj, for instance.
Wasn't there Roberto Sebastian Matta yet?
No, Or maybe there was, but I didn't meet him. Many artists, many passing encounters. I remember that, one evening, I met Tristan Tzara, at the bar, with other two or three artists, we were together, at the same table...
You were saying you were in Paris, in 1962, at the table where Pierre Restany...
... Was trying to convince César...
… To join in the group of Nouveau réalisme.Did Restany create this group as a reaction to pop art?
Probably yes, it was in fact the European version of pop art.
And was Arman already there?
Yes, there were Arman, Yves Klein, Niki Saint-Phalle...
While Mimmo Rotella came afterwards.
I met him in that period.
In 1962, in Paris.
Casual encounters. I remember we had met on the street, with other artists,common friends, and he had told me where he lived...
Was he already living in Paris?
No, he lived in a hotel. I had also met a critic, whom I don't remember the name of, that had introduced me to other artists, like Alberto Giacometti.
Did you meet Giacometti only once?
I met him only once.
What impression did you get about him?
A rather strange impression. He told me he had a very small studio, with the floor in beaten earth... that is, the fact that an artist with a certain success could work in a sort of basement made a strange impression on me. There was something that didn't correspond, something strange.
Strange in what way? He was famous...
He was famous yet he worked in a sort of basement, when he could have had a studio!
Are we sure that he could have had it or was he...
We are sure.
It was his style, wasn't it?
Yes, it was a rather strange thing. Since he had started in a basement he had preferred to go on in a basement. He said he found himself at ease in that little...
Did you meet him there, in that studio?
No, he described it to me. In Paris, I was always looking for a studio, me and others; unfortunately, it was possible to find rooms, but not an actual studio. Alberto Giacometti said to me, instead: "the studio isn't important.", and added that he would work in four square metres, with a floor in beaten earth.
It is not strange. I have met artists, in Russia, that worked in impossible conditions, with no studio, in basements, with only electric light.
The sculptor Quinto Ghermandi also, in Bologna, at a certain point did not have the studio any more. He would go to Verona, in a casting house, to make the sculptures and didn't need a studio any more.
When he was already famous.
Yes.
We are talking about artists who, owing to particular living conditions, for political or economical reasons, did not have the possibility of a studio; let's not talk about those who were already famous and could afford to work in a casting house.
That critic was called Dufren, he also introduced me to some artists of Nouveau réalisme. We would see each other, more out of friendship than effective collaboration.
And with Restany?
I went to see him, I brought him some photographs, but he wasn't interested in these kinds of things anymore,because he was already thinking about Nouveau réalisme. My painting was non- figurative,at the time, so he wasn't interested very much.
Then,you come back from Paris in 1962. You leave your wife in Paris...
Yes, I leave her in Paris.
Had you married before going to Paris?
Yes, in 1955. In 1961 my wife came to Paris. She had left her job in Bologna, before moving to Paris.
So, in 1962, your wife remains in Paris because she has a job there.
She had found a job as window decorator at Christophe's. In the autumn, when I came back to Bologna, she had no activity to follow there, while in Paris she had this job. So she stayed on. I tried with teaching, instead.
Once in Bologna, you had to labour a lot...
I went to Milan, to look for the gallerists I knew. Cardazzo, for instance. He said: "Yes, they're interesting things, but this is a bad moment ..." I went to see other friends, in Turin, that had encouraged me in the last years. Nothing.
What about Guidi?
Guidi couldn't do anything. I went to see him, though... He could give me a few thousand lire, nothing more. That wasn't what I needed. Finally, thanks to a friend, I found work as a teacher, in Forlì.
It was a way to say: I am sure for a certain aspect, in the meantime I go on with my work.
Yes, it was a problem of actual physical survival, in that moment, because I had no kind of income...
Was it the most critical moment of your life?
Yes, because in Bologna there were no possibilities. There was a gallery I would have made two personal exhibitions with, in the following years(1965- 1967), the gallery Il Cancello of Giovanni Ciangottini,an artist from Bologna that died a few months ago. With Ciangottini I had done many collective exhibitions, in the Fifties. He came from the Umbria region, he'd moved to Bologna, and had opened his first art gallery there, in the Fourties, where all artists in Bologna passed by. He had this space, he permitted to exhibit, but he had no money, he was simply an artist who put his gallery at the disposal of other artists...
He wasn't a merchant.
No, he wasn't. In that moment, in Bologna, there were no other galleries interested in my work, so...
Wasn't there any gallery in Forlì interested in you?
No, in Forlì there was only one gallery that made flower exhibitions, things like that. I came to Forlì owing to a series of cicumstances: a class-mate of mine from the Academy, an artist from Mantua, taught in that city. A teaching post had gone vacant, he advised me and I went. They gave me this little teaching job, only a few hours, then...
What did you teach?
Metals, that is Goldsmith and Enamel Painting on copper techniques. I had the students prepare the drawings, that were afterwards executed in the laboratory.
In practice, you taught Drawing.
Yes, I was also director of the two laboratories, but there were other teachers, too. I taught in Forlì until 1969, I was vice-headmaster by then. A the time of the contest, the director had retired and left me the school, that I kept for a year, until the Ministry sent me a teacher as permanent director, whom I immediately started collaborating with, naturally. I continued in Forlì until 1974, then I asked to be transferred and I went to teach at the "Liceo" specialised in art subjects in Bologna.
Why did you ask to be transferred?
To get a bit nearer Bologna. I stay at the artistic lyceum for a year, then they appoint me as teacher in Arezzo and Forlì. I choose Forlì, naturally, where I return as appointed teacher. I stop there until 1979, when I go to Modena as school director - in the meantime the law changes, and directors start being called headmasters. And, from 1979 to 1996, I'm headmaster in Modena.
And then?
Then, I leave.
You aren't teaching ever since 1996.
In that I'm not in school any more.
From 1979 to 1996 makes thirty four years. During that period, you exhibit less than in that from 1954 to 1962.
No, until 1973 I go on exhibiting. In the Seventies, the Conceptual comes up, there's a bit of an earthquake in the galleries, so I paused a bit. Then Modena arrives, and I have a very busy time.
You live in Modena from 1979 to 1996, for seventeen years, during which you're headmaster. Seventeen years in which you were too absorbed by your work of teaching...
Yes, I manage to do a few exhibitions in nearby places.
And you work little.
Yes, I work little. I'm having a big exhibition in Carpi, at the Castle of Pio Sala Cervi, an enormous exhibition.
How many works?
Around a hundred, but of great dimensions.
And where are these works now?
They're here, in part.
And the other ones?
Something went around, a bit, something has been kept by the administration.
Some have remained in the museum of Carpi, naturally.
Yes,the years I worked in Forlì did not condition me in my work, on the contrary, I worked a lot in those years.
So, in the Fifties and Sixties...
...And the first part of the Seventies...
You work a lot. Globally, since then up to nowadays, you make around two thousand five hundred works.
Between the ones done on paper and those on canvas, surely.
Production diminishes a lot while you are headmaster. But why, do you feel satisfied?
No, I've always kept the two things quite separate.
Because there's a critic that says: "Alfonso Frasnedi is headmaster, in his case the saying "those that don't know how to make, teach" isn't valid: he does know how to make and besides,he teaches. Don't you think yours is a strange destiny? You, who find yourself never being regulamentary, following your own itinerary, attending school irregularly, doing your examinations without attending courses, entering the Academy for a reason extraneous to the Academy itself, by a whim of fate your destiny is that of teaching, and even of being headmaster, for seventeen years, of a"Liceo"specialised in Art subjects in Modena. That does seem strange, doesn't it?
Yes, it does seem rather curious.
Have you always felt a revolutionary?
A revolutionary, never.
Not in politics, in art.
No, I've never felt like an actual revolutionary; I felt like making a work that was on the edge of the moment, neither a bit further back nor a bit further on.
On the edge. But it neither pertained to the times nor ...
In certain moments, I've been told that my work was too forward, but it wasn't. According to me, those that said so weren't up to date enough, meaning "of the day".
But weren't you backward?
No, not backward.
You say that pop art had catalyzed all attention during the Sixties, then conceptual in the Seventies, postmodern and trans-avantgarde in the Eighties. In the Nineties, now, there's new age painting, very easy, all decorum.
I keep a low profile with these things; and it's clear I could be considered surpassed myself.
With respect to pop art?
No, because I did do something in that period. As for conceptual, I think my paintings were quite conceptual, inside.
There was logic.
Yes, but it wasn't conceptual painting.
You were on the edge there also, let's say.
Yes, sometimes somebody would define my little clouds "conceptual", because they are, but it isn't conceptual painting.
In the Fifties there's so called neonaturalism. It isn't Guidi's case.
No, Guidi always defined himself as spatial: together with Fontana, he signed theTechnical manifesto of Spatialism. Guidi's a spatialist, from the Fifties onwards; before, in the Twenties, he was part of the Roman school.
Was it a sort of avant-garde?
Yes. I passed quite near neonaturalism only because the theorisers were Arcangeli and, in Milan, Testori. It was a Padanian situation, we were practically all inside it. I had relations with Arcangeli so, I was influnenced, somehow. But, with Arcangeli there's been an explanation, in that he always supported situations of highly strung and exasperated passionlity, while I always sustained the idea that passionality should be regulated.
It shouldn't be.
There was this contrast. I remember one of the last, pleasant, never quarrelsome, discussions I had with Arcangeli on jazz. He supported New Orleans jazz, all improvisation, while I preferred more modern, less improvised jazz. My neonaturalism is of this kind.
It isn't neonaturalism.
I'd say not.
And what about informal? What have you got to do with informal?
There is no informal in my work.
There's a splendid form, a magnificent form!
That is always new and invented and makes no reference to any preceding form. There, my informal can be syntethised only by this definition: it makes no reference to pre-existing forms. This is my only relation. Also my pop art works, besides, are not like those of American pop artists.
No, not even like the European pop artists.
Exactly. My intentions were slightly different. I don't know if you can read it, but my idea was to have components of social character that would enter the work of those years.
Thus, irony.
Yes.
Is irony a constant component in your work?
Yes, irony and detachment.
Non-representation.
I also wrote it: the images I used in the Sixties and in the first part of the Seventies, I would combine and recombine to take away their meaning, referred to their image, form themso that they would have a simply combinatory meaning. In this sense, I used irony regarding the image. I even ridiculed images, without getting to actual irony, because I think that irony stops before ridicule. Even when I make a work that has no reference to images, that does not combine images, I always try to play with colours or composition or colour zones.
You insist a lot upon the matter of colour.
Yes, because I believe that painting should be done with colour.
But there is colour, and then there are colours, colours like sounds, you say. Thus, acoustic art.
As they vibrate in the eyes, so must colours vibrate in the ears, even if you don't hear the sounds.
Must painting vibrate in the ears?
Yes. painting is dumb if you see it with your eyes, instead it must echo. It is mute to the vision of the world, to the things seen. With respect to the eye it is dumb, but not likewise to the ear.
Yes, it must echo inside, it must echo in the ear. Perhaps the word "echo" is not the most precise one.
There's the wall of sound. And light?
It is part of this coloured vibration, that enters more the ear than the eye.
This is your idea of painting.
This is my idea. My idea is also that inside things there should be two contrasting elements, that create debate between them, colour and matter, flat surface and matter...
Maybe, the surface is never flat.
There must be these contrasting elements inside...
Symmetry and asymmetry...
Cold colour and warm colour, broken lines and curved lines.
The actual line is never there.
No, the actual line is never there.
And not even the circle.
And not even the circle. I never start from a linear type of idea, but always from a coloured idea, from an image that is an image of colour.
You start with an idea of colour. So, the condition is the colour,the condition of the idea, and the itinerary's condition also. Your idea of painting never modified itself...
No, my idea of painting has always remained the same, even if to be able to define it I used various methods and images. According to the moment, I used different images. It may seem like I have a different attitude, while my attitude towards painting remains always the same...
You used different material: material from neonaturalism, material from informal, material from popart,material from conceptual...
Yes, I did.
Leonardo da Vinci says that there are some painters who paint, maybe even with ease, according to the exigencies and answers they must give to the market, and there are painters who think painting.
If I had followed the market's requests...
You would only have painted.
I would have painted always the same things. I keep on having requests for the neonaturalist work I made half-way through the Fifties. If I wanted to, I could do those pictures again and I would have a market. They also keep on asking me those informal things, if only I had continued to make them. But there's no sense in continuing to make the things I made forty years ago! Besides, to get to those images I inspired myself with the works I took from artists of the past, the rereading I made by putting into contact certain past images of mine with images taken from the reading of Giorgione, for instance, or Goya or other artists...
Which are the artists from the past you read again?
Goya, Giorgione, Manet, Velàzquez, for example. Above all Giorgione, because in this artist there is a kind of image...
The Tempest?
Giorgione's Tempest is a mute image, an image that doesn't say: it remains and lives because of a series of vibrations that arise from the work without becoming a meaning. This is one of my rereadings.
So, there is no vision of the world in the Tempest.
There isn't one even in Giorgione's Three Philosophers. Nor is there one in Manet's Breakfast on the grass. From Velàzquez I took Laas Meninas, a work on which Picasso worked a lot, so I didn't think it was the case of insisting. I did a lot of rereadings...
Not that much.
Because I had to give a lot of them away. It's a work I made a lot because it was very required, and that I interrupted on account of the very fact it was too required, getting back to Leonardo. When something is liked too much I don't think you should carry on making it, as it means that it's cycle is concluded, it has already spoken to too many people, so it becomes superfluous to indulge upon the same speech.
When did you do those rereadings?
From 1971 to 1973. Then, I went back to using the constitutive elements of painting. My attention was above all drawn towards surfaces, matter, colour - simply to colour, not in relation to other colours. It's a rather brief period, a sort of zeroing in order to start again. And then, I start rediscovering colours, I start rediscovering forms, the square that returns.
Square.
The square is like the window in Matisse. For him, the window is a space that is opened, a space in and a space out. I, instead, put it at the centre of the picture, but it isn't a space that is opened, it's an in-out. An inside-out oneself, there is no without, the window, and no within, the inside. The window is an in-out, two spaces that reverberate in themselves, for that same need to create debate inside the work that not be simply an inside-out.
A debate.
A debate, yes, springing from this ambiguity. From the Seventies, up to the beginning of the Eighties, when this kind of square form is dilated.
Does Malevic have no implication for you, between the Seventies and the Eighties?
No, more Matisse, more Albers, for this form of square that I makedifferently. I have the impression that this square has dilated to the point of occupying nearly all the surface's space.
But it isn't square! It's an impossible quadrature. It's like the famous squaring of the circle that Leonardo thought he'dsolved, while afterwards, he meets infinitesimal calculus. The squaring of the circle is impossible, and he goes on with the squaring of the circle!
In fact, by dint of making squares, I got to tracing the line of a horizon. Square had become so big, that it became only one of the four sides, and it became a horizon.
Is it a diagonal?
No, it's a horizontal. On that horizontal I worked for ten years, practically for all the Eighties.
On that line that isn't a line.
Yes, it's a separation, it isn't a line.
You say that vertical is horizontal, and that horizontal is separation. Vertical, which does not appear there...
It started appearing only recently.
In any case, vertical is implied.
Yes. Verticals are of a physical type, they close this horizon.
Vertical ties, joints, gives symmetry, it is somehow body; horizontal, instead, separates, is asymmetrical, disjoints, unties.
Yes, in that sense.
This is your painting's original contrast.
From here, good and evil.
Good and evil, positive and negative. From here, proceeds debate. And the very itinerary.
Certainly.
This happens in the Eighties, during so-called postmodern. There are refluences, aren't there?
Yes. I do not suffer that refluence. The only effect this generally felt situation has on me is that of my withdrawing for a while. I reread and go back on my things; for instance, I rediscover intonations from the close of the Nineteenth century, beginning of the Twentieth, intonations of cetain postimpressionist artists, that become interesting for me.
Which artists?
Pierre Bonnard, for instance, Edouard Vuillard, artists that worked with Matisse.
And Matisse himself.
And Matisse, yes. But for the coloured atmospheres especially Vuillard and Bonnard, the nabis painters, that create a very decadent painting, very folded up in itself.
Decadent as a way of saying.
Yes, it's the end of a century and the beginning of a new one. And I take up these things again, this kind of intonation, because from here you can start again. Just as they have terminated the Nineteenth century and begun the Twentieth, somehow, with this kind of intonation, I think one can terminate what came before, these rereadings, these postmodern situations, to start something...
It is only a pretext for you to make things always along your itinerary, in another phase. In 1983 there was the informal art exhibition in which you participated, too.
Yes, in Bologna. With a few incomprehensions. I didn't know what kind of exhibition it was, and when they came to choose the works to expose, they chose the first ones they found. It was a very improvised choice. Certain works were chosen only because of the date. I could have exhibited more important works, also concerning the dimensions.
And in the Nineties?
In the Nineties I made a few exhibitions, continuing with the same intention, that is working always on square and on horizon. And then, very recently, a vertical element enters this horizontality that had become rather exasperated, in the Eighties. In the last things I made, I felt the necessity of inserting also some vertical element.
But this verticality has always been there.
Yes, it's become more evident in the latest things.
You say, though, that there is no evidence in your painting.
I believe not.
It was abolished by Malevic, but maybe also by Leonardo da Vinci.
I think this is a trait of all artists. Art is never explicit, it can't be, it would end being art to become something else.
And did your readings, on subjects different from art, continue during the Sixties and Seventies?
Much less.
So, they occur mostly during the Fifties.
Above all.For instance, I was veryinterestedin the theatre during the Fifties, since then I think I've been to thetheatre maybe two or three times. Just as the cinema interested mealot during the Sixties.
Pasolini?
Pasolini as a writer, as an essayist, not as a film-artist. In Paris, I used to attend the Cinématheque, I would see three films a day - not every day - because I was very interestd in moving images.
What kind of cinema were you interested in, particularly?
In silent cinema, mostly.
And did Walt Disney ever interest you?
Not very much. The years in which I worked on cartoons, I preferred those with human figures, while Walt Disney represents mainly animals. No, I wasn't interested in that kind of representation.
That of Walt Disney's is an animation, they're animated cartoons, while in your case it is not animation.
No, I only got interested in the images that came from the comic strips.
Yes, where the human figure and what it says is drawn. Comic strips for teenagers, rather than animated cartoons.
Yes, especially the American ones that had, then, a violence of colours that the comic strip drawn in Italy did not have.
They were coloured comic strips. How did you use them, always ironically?
Yes, using those passages that,in my opinion, would become a bit ironical. In certain cases, I would take only the drawing of the cloud that contained the words without putting words in, leaving it mute, I would take particular extracts, fragmenting them.
So, neither absrtract nor figurative.
You could say so.
You haven't been exactly abstract, but there has always been abstraction. You have never been figurative, even if in certain cases you have also used figures.
Not always, but in certain cases I have used figures.
In a text you wrote this year, called "Words, Far Off" you talk about flight and wing beating.
I have always been impressed by this movement that comes as if contracted, nearly congealed into a thing. In the case of flight it becomes flight, in the case of work it becomes work. It rises from a moment of agitation, but then it distends itself upon the surface. In certain moments, my work has convulsive aspects; but, this kind of convulsion is always orderly, it is always thought, it is always reasoned, and it always rises from a subterraenean structure.
You write: "I speak to you of what is not, the answer will so be found only by exclusion".
It's because I wouldn't ever want my things to be explicit.
Wouldn't you want them to be evident, that they were the pure and simple representation of life?
Just so.
What has your life got to do with your painting?
Well, I'd say they don't have much to do with each other.
Not as an autobiography.
No, except for a few moments of pause.
It's another life, that of painting, it's another life. The life of painting is another!
It is a life of it's own that grows and proceeds on itself, it makes no reference to quotidianity.
You also write: "Night is green with shadows. Green is the logic of natural. Black is irrational folly, is the obscurity of the unknown. Painting has green-black blood. Or green-red. From visual to acoustic".
Yes, it is always those two elements that must be composed aand recomposed, put in vertical and in horizontal, green and red...
Joint and separation.
Yes.
You say that painting is your way of writing, don't you?
It is the one I find most congenial.
When you have to write with words it is a tremendous enterprise, instead. But, also painting is a tremendous enterprise.
In painting I find more logic than what I find in putting words together. Since painting occurs more by allusion, through each allusion I manage to find continuity. While with words I have to strain myself a lot more to recompose the allusions and give them a logical development.
Did Kandinskij interest you?
Not a lot.
Yours is a narrow road. The road you have followed for your production is a narrow road, in it's various phases, in the various stages, throughout the years.
Yes, it is a narrow road, but it's rather direct.
There is a direction, but it is narrow. Have you ever accepted any compromises?
I have the impression of never having accepted any.
Otherwise you would have become fashionable, don't you think so?
Yes I do!
You were always on the verge of having success, but you never succeeded.
I took part, for a certain period, in prize-awarding painting competitions. I won a few prizes myself; usually, I was in the finalists'list, but I wouldn't win the prize.
Was it because you didn't know anybody?
Perhaps. As a kid I used to go bicycle running and I did a few races; but, I would never arrive first, I would be third, fourth. It's a bit like what happened to me with painting: to get always rather near, but without ever getting to maximal recognition. Obviously that of Venice's Biennial Modern Art exhibition's has been very important occurrence, because other artists, even from Bologna, were excluded on that same occasion.
There, you've had those who esteem you.
Then there's been the Zagabria Biennial...
Then in Cracovia, where you also took part. And in Venice, no more?
Probably, I must have entered some list, but I remained...
The bicycle paragon is curious, because in that case it's not a matter of compromise, it's a matter of logic. Do you say that you used to be third or fourth in bicycle races - that it was a hobby among friends, in the Fifties?
Yes.
Practically, you would organise yourself in order not to be first. It was you that arranged not to be first!
I... would have liked to be first.
Officially you were, but in fact you weren't. You would head towards being first, but there was a kind of logic that made you forbid yourself to be first, you wouldn't strain yourself to be first.
Yes, probably it was the same situation in these prize awards.
At school, you weren't worried in the least of being first, you didn't almost care anything at all. While in the bicycle races, you did care about being first, even if they weren't official races, your destiny was not at stake.
No, it wasn't.
So, I don't know if the paragon is fitting. Well, maybe you didn't think your destiny was at stake in those prize-awards. You won the Biennial Modern Art exhibition, and you said: now my destiny is not at stake any more.
Yes, there was also some of that. Besides, I don't want to sound victimistic, I didn't strain myself around important critics. Everything I obtained, I obtained ...
Out of accident.
Out of magnanimity. They invited me to the exhibitions because it was their idea, I never contacted them myself... I never solicited invitations, prizes and things like that.
So you had to make a very big effort only in the autumn of 1962, when you came back from Paris, but you didn't always have to! After teaching, especially...
Yes, on that occasion I went to see my friends, that I had a sort of habit with, things we'd said, but I never went to a critic I didn't know to ask for something. I did ask Fabrizio d'Amico to present the 1993 exhibition, for instance. I met him, I asked him, he said : "I'll come and see the works". He came, they interested him, he wrote an essay. Then he said to me: "We shall do other things", that haven't been done. But I don't press, I don't telephone...
You never entered the power's workings over art in Italy, in these fortyfive years. You've always avoided success. You were about to succeed, but you preferred to avoid success, why is that?
I avoided it naturally, on account of my natural disposition: because I'm not very aggressive, I don't go and ask, I don't show myself a lot, maybe these are the reasons.
Are you a bit shy?
Yes I am.
And then because these characteristics of sobriety, of discretion, of abstraction are those of your itinerary and your art, not only of your social behaviour.
Yes, there are ways of my being that are reflected, consequently, also in my work.
The opposite, I'd say: they are modes of your work that are reflected consequently in things.
I've always thought that a work should have a value indipendently from who does it or proposes it. I have colleagues that...
But if nobody proposes it, it remains in the basement.I don't find this very interesting!
No, of course not. I have colleagues that propose themselves. I believe that if they didn't propose themselves,work would finish. I have always tried to propose a work independently from myself.
Ah, there you are. You made yourself invisible.
Let's say so.
You proposed the work; as for you, you made yourself invisible. You said, in fact, that your person and your life have little to do with your work, and so on.
Yes.
And what about politics? Politics have always expected to exercise a hegemony over art and, consequently, also a power over art, at least concerning the forces that...
administered the public field...
No, I haven't had many encounters with politics. Even if I do some exhibitions with the socialist party, I did some with the communist party, I took part in communist party festivals when they did exhibitions, I produced some graphic material for them...
You produced graphic material and did exhibitions at the communist party festival.
Yes, in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies. I took part in rallies that concerned artists and art organized by political parties.
Usually it was the left wing, because in Italy almost only the left was interested in art.
Yes. Nearly all critics, moreover, people that are interested in art usually are leftists, or used to be. I participated too, but without having a particularly active role.
You've never had the party membership card.
Never.
You've never been a party militant.
Even if the party did refer to me, for certain things. I remember, for instance, when there was a colllection of works to help the "Unità", daily newspaper of the communist party, they asked me for some works and I gave some graphical placards. On another occasion, I drew an original graphic work for the communist party festival. All the printing was sold on that occasion.
Do you mean serigraphs, litographs?
Yes, I do.
Not works on paper.
Also, but above all printed things.
Concerning the materials used, which ones do you prefer?
It's many years now that I prefer water colour, acrylic and vinylic, because they have a very different yield from oil. I believe that oil painting is tied to a certain type of representation that isn't mine any more.
But did you use oil?
Yes, until the Sixties. Then I passed on to these newer, more modern materials.
Do you even say that you have better results with these?
Yes, they give a better yield for my type of work; oil painting,somehow, always has references, nearly impediments, I'd say, while these new materials I use in my painting make no reference to anything else.
There is no reference, no reservation, no obstacle.
There isn't. Painting is really only that thin coat that's on the canvas, there, it is not comparable to anything else outside itself, in a word.
Does this painting resist?
Yes, things made in the first part of the Sixties are still perfect. I cannot say the same thing about oil painting. Because oil painting...
Needs restoration.
Yes. In certain oil paintings of the Fifties, for instance, the whites have yellowed. There's a picture I keep at home, for which I don't need any restoration, but if I were to use it, I would have to restore it . While in these other things -apart from some, made with carved wood, where, maybe, the ply-wood on which the colour was spread may have been broken - the colour itself has remained perfect.
So, let's consider the works present in this catalogue. Is it the biggest exhibition, up to now?
Yes, it is the biggest.
It embraces works from the Fifties to the present.
From 1953 to 1998.
Could you tell me something, as you go along, considering also their titles? You put some curious titles.
Yes, this is a work of 1953, that makes reference to the things I had seen at the time, for instance Pollock.
It isn't Pollock, though.
It isn't Pollock. In Pollock, there's an agitation of gesture, in the dripping, while here the dripping is released. It's a rather dadaist attitude respect to Pollock's.
And yet, it's not even dadaist.
It's not even dadaist. In that period, I made works in which there's only a coloured stain left to expand on the canvas at the will of the ink... I left it that way, simply, as a found object, to pick up an idea of Duchamp's again, I let the stain expand. Just as these drippings are made...
Didn't you influence the stain in any way?
No, Even if, naturally, bigger, smaller, more colour, less colour, there has been some influence.
Let's admit this! A stain alone does not make a work, Leonardo da Vinci says, criticising Botticelli.
Here's something else, made in 1957, titled Remembrance of a Landscape. There's this sort of landscape, there's this horizontality, above all also in the dimensions of the canvas. Of this landscape there remain only traces, because it's as if it were cut behind and all that isn't in the foreground had been excluded: so, it stands practically against a white background. This one's a work from 1953, The Sun on the Hill, that reminds one of those neonaturalistic images...
Beautiful. You must tell me why you put this title and, then, I assure you I don't find anything natural.
There's this green, this lights that filter..
But they're not natural. They're unnatural.
Yes, in fact neonaturalism is something other than nature, even if there are echoes that, here, are constituted by the green and this heap, that make somehow reference to the woods.
Yes, but they're well formed, well articulate woods.
Well invented.
Well invented! Artificial woods, not natural woods. Why did you call it The Sun on the Hill?
Because there's this zone of light that gets illuminated from behind, and that can somehow hint at a zone of earth between the green and...
Yes. Let's go back to the other works from the Fifties.
This one, for instance, is a painting of the end of the Fifties, a painting of virtual character.
What is it called?
Journey in the Sun. There's this marked red trace, this very evident yellow background.
It looks like more of a structure, to me, rather than an informal.
Yes, it's informal in that it's gestual. Yes, in this case it's become gestual, because I oscillated between materic and gestual, in those two, three years called informal.
So, it was neither materic nor gestual.
A bit of both and a bit none of the two. I'm looking for another work, where there's both a presence of a trace of gestual character, in the centre, and a matter as thick as the one I used in the years from 1957 to 1958. It's rather similar to the one you can find at Bologna's Modern Art Gallery, bought by Arcangeli for the Gallery. Thy're the things Barilli also refers to when he talks about abbreviation..
Of cipher.
Of cipher.
If, with the pretext of informal, you get to the cipher.. it's something different from informal!
This one, for example, is yet another one from the Fifties, Study for a Battle. Here, there are both gesture and matter; in fact, there's a sort of conflict between these traces...
Of struggle, more than conflict.
Yes, between these traces and these colours. The colours are cery explicit: white and yellow, red and black, against awhite background, in big evidence. And these traces fight among themselves. The Fifties' last image is called "Fragment in the Sun".
Year?
1957.
So, in the Fifties there's often the sun...
Yes, there's this vivid, violent colour, there are these yellows, these reds. It's an element that comes back quite frequently. Here, I see there's a thing from 1953-54, they are trees. This is rather naturalistic perhaps, there's a separation between the sky...
Absolutely not.
Here, the work we were looking for is this one, Fragment In The Sun from 1957, a work of great thickness of matter. Matter, here, is very evident. It's part of those works where the image tends to gather and clog in the centre, while the former works, like the fight before, are much more open. Here, instead, the image tends to thicken in the central zone of the painting. It's a kind of operation that goes on in the Sixties.
Yes, let's see the works from the Sixties.
There's that landscape, in 1960, that's only a horizontal band of matter: they are works I made before going to Paris. In Paris, these bands of matter got simplified, they became a sort of rectangle, that was placed in different situations. Here there's one, with a horizontal band and square zones, squares of colours: it's a thing that refers to a very balanced painting, if not specifically to geometric painting.
What is it called?
Image and White, from 1961. I painted this one in Paris. It's one of the few things I brought back from Paris.
What about the other ones?
Concerning the other ones, some were lost, other bigger ones, for instance a two-metre painting, I left them in the studio and I don't know what happened to them. I left some to people in Paris, like that. Something else went lost in a border crossing. Look, these colour zones.. Colour, in the Paris years, is very different from how it was formerly.
That is?
Before, they were very contrasting colours, yellows, reds, blacks, whites. In the Paris years, these colours calm down, become browns, grays, whites, rather burnt colours. Primary colours, basic colours are excluded, so as to have a softer, less tense, less dramatic atmosphere than the preceding ones. When I came back to Italy, I substituted these colour zones with paper collages taken from the magazines. With cut-out images. Here's one: on a very roughly painted background, there are positioned images, little symbols... it's a work of composition, above all, where these images enter. These images taken from the magazines, successively, explode. And occupy all the canvas. They become pop painting, in order to have a cognitive reference. At first, I make details of cartoon strips where there are highlighted only the sounds of noise, for instance "Crack!", "Boom!", I write these sounds in colour, I put only these details in evidence. Then, there's a very brief period in which I litterally remake the comic strip, in big dimension, always adding a detail of the extracts. Later on, I start cutting images on ply-wood, colouring and placing them to obtain ambiances with cut-out, very fragile images. These fragile images are still recognisable, they are still figures; for instance, two sleeping figures articulated according to a certain fashion, figures of woman, of lips, of details. After this period, I try to build and I compose syntheses of images: the tree, the cloud, the sea, elements of nature...
they are types: type-tree, type-sea, type-cloud.
It's a typography.
Almost.
Typograms. It's a typogrammar.
These images I mix, compose, recompose infinitely...
Into infinity, more than infinity.
... In order to obtain this image of false nature.
False nature has always been present in your work.
Yes, but this is explicit. It is explicitely false, it is explicitally a false nature.
There never is the representation of nature, nor of society nor of the world, if not as a false representation, at the most. Or there's the matter of representation, more than the representation of matter.
This is a creation I make in the early Seventies. In those years, I get the impression that this composing and recomposing operation has reached saturation: So, I step back and reread famous works composed together with elements of false nature.
The nature you devote yourself to is the nature present in works of art!
My former little clouds, together with Manet's Breakfast On The Grass, placed in this situation, still in a sea, of the kind I used to make in that period, and so on. The motif I use throughout all the Sixties is that of the box, a sort of box, of package - that's how I used to call it during that period, meaning to say that everything was packed up, everything was merchandised: it was a kind of ironical criticism of the consumism of those years, when consumism was discovered.
Dont's you respect the box?
No, I don't. This kind of package-box...
Black box.
... In which there were either little clouds or...
René Thom's black box theory is the theory of catastrophes: this box contains all, contemplates all, even catastrophe, even negative.
This is something rather different, in that it's the very package, and the object that is packed inside the box, sold and merchandised. This sort of package-box, a bit at a time,becomes a square. And it leaves out all the rest, it excludes the representation of the little clouds or of the sea, false-nature, it excludes the representation of the works of art's rereading, it leaves out everything and occupies nearly all the picture's surface. Picking up again that hypotheseis of debate inside the work, the square, this sort of square with rounded angles...
Impossible quadrature.
... Has a materic thickness that enters this debate with the surface of the canvas, left, instead, nearly clean, nearly rough. The roughness of the canvas plays, by contrast, with the thickness of matter. We're half-way through the Seventies, more or less. Then, box, square, becomes ever more important, it is charged with colour and does not place itself on a limpid, plane surface any more...
Apparently plane.
... But in a moving situation. The debate that, in a first moment, had developped between the surface of the canvas and the matter of colour...
There's contrast and debate.
... Successively, it develops between a surface of the square, very extended, and a very animated surface upon which the square is placed. Towards the end of the Seventies, from 1979 onwards, with a totally coloured surface, still there are coloursand, little by little, there arises a need to meet the square that enlargens and dilates itself once more and I find the horizon again.
In the Eighties.
In the first half of the Eighties. Naturally, they are pictures full of colour, non violent colours, always in tune without any particular discordance. Half-way through the Eighties, I make a brief revisitation of artists' works. No more rereadings, as I had done in the first Seventies, but with a kind of synthony towards certain artists.
Which ones are they?
Cézanne, Rothko, Albers. For Rothko, for example, I made a work called A Horizon Sixty-seven Years Long. He lived for sixtyseven years, he committed suicide in New York. This picture is constituted by a nearly fluorescent central line, of great evidence, of great violence, a very intense pink, very obscure, against a variegated background, but made substancially with two colours. I am refering to him, but also as an artist that lived for sixtyseven years, that had this life continuity of his, so it isn't a rereading.
It's a parable.
Yes, it is.
It is Rothko brought in parable.
Yes. So, for instance, I got from Cézanne an idea of the mountain, Mont Sainte-Victoire, which has a line that crosses it, and all the area below is of a very intense blue. I thought about this mountain immersed in the azure of the Mediterranean sea, a thing Cézanne did not do. They are not actual rereadings, in a word, they are operations in which I searched for synthonies.
They're not even synthonies. Cézanne, here also, is brought in parable of your own painting.
Yes. From Josef Albers I got the square motif, that he places perspectively though and from the bottom he goes towards the top, with consequently a rather different function. Of course, also in my work there's the square, but a square is not an exclusive form of Albiers's.
And not even of Malevic's.
And not even of Malevic's, even though both largely used it. By now, we're in the Nineties, two or three of these elements are elaborated again: The square element and the horizon element. In most recent years there is this...
In the last two years, ever since you're not a headmaster anymore...
Ever since I'm not a headmaster any more... The last things are against black backgrounds, black occupies all space. In the following years, this black got dilated to the point of decidedly occupying all space, except for a sort of central halo, that marks out the horizon. Around this horizon, there condense few, rare brushstrokes of colour. This is the work of 1995-96. In the latest things there's always this image of the square with a halo that marks it and, sometimes, there intervene one or more vertical elements that insert themselves, interrupting...
There's a linguistical rarefaction, in the last period.
Yes, even if I found a much bolder, much more vivacious colour again. In my most recent works, I made red backgrounds, yellow backgrounds, black backgrounds, blue backgrounds. In a word, rather strong colours. This is the work I'm following even now.
Now,that there's no more school, the good times come! The future lies ahead.
Let's hope so. It's what I wish myself!
Is there never any purgatory in your work?
No, there isn't. I'd say it's a work that develops with a certain happiness, because I like to express myself that way. When I can release some things on this surface...
"Release",so to speak.
When I can do these things I'm rather happy, even if sometimes they are things that have a dramaticity of their own.
They do get elaborated in your work, though.
Yes.
Has there ever been extreme pain, in your life?
No, I'd say not. I've had some pains, like everybody else.
Neither your father's death nor the separation from your wife...
No.
Your mother died at ninetyseven. Did you live with her?
No, I didn't.
Did she live on her own?
Yes, lately. On her own, meaning by this that my sister and my brother-in-law have a small business, and a house near the firm; my mother lived on the first floor, my sister on the second. So, she had her own flat.
Yes, but she was with your sister.
These are all events I rationalised, I don't know how efficaciously. There have been moments of pain, which I managed to work out, though.
A new impulse. We are here, in a hall of Villa San Carlo Borromeo where there are some paintings by Alberto Bragaglia, from 1915 to the Twenties. What do they look like to you? This painter is not framable, even if there were Boccioni, Balla and many others next to him; he was above all a philosopher and an artist.
I prefer the ones with no figures. Where there's light, above all. His is a futurism of light. The one that, afterwards, will be taken up by Balla.....
Balla is more static.
Yes, he's colder. Balla's provenance is divisionism, pointillisme, probably his was a kind of painting of the late Nineteenth century. It isn't new painting, the futurism of the Twentieth century. Bragaglia, instead, does a rather original operation: he doesn't follow past schemes, but has this idea of futurism of light, a rather original idea.
He paints in Frosinone, Rome and Anzio.
Yes, he's also been in contact with artists like Balla and Boccioni a lot.
It isn't his road, nonetheless.
He didn't have a public life, as an artist.
He made exibitions, immediately. Later on, every so often. But he taught philosophy, he wrote many books on aesthetics, architecture, town-planning, art philosophy. I'd like to ask you: has the Emilia region got something to do with your work?
No,it's a casualty. I chanced to have birth and live in Emilia.....
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