Page 58 - Studio International - October 1966

In addition to the Neapolitan group there are others
based on Genoa, Florence and Turin, similarly interested
in figurative painting—and partly following the American
example. To mention some: the Roman group—Tacchi,
Ceroli, Festa; the Milanese Adami; the isolated artist
Marchegiani of Leghorn. The most original is Ceroli,
who has exhibited a large, crowded caseful of carvings
and invented a kind of painting-sculpture, or sculpture in
two dimensions, hollowed out of thin planks of raw wood,
producing what are essentially silhouettes and usually
drawing for subject-matter on comic aspects of modern
life. By contrast, Tacchi, who uses a special technique in
which the canvas is given particular contours by padding,
likes to paint stereotyped scenes in which the kitsch
element is deliberately emphasized. The result, though
often disagreeable, is a notable feat of 'demystification'.
Two other figurative painters of some interest are Festa,
who frequently uses images from classical iconography
(e.g. Michelangelo), distorts them and makes them banal
—another gesture of `demystification'; and Adami, who
has invented his own vocabulary, in part derived from
surrealism, and paints scenes of domestic and everyday
life (or at least life as it is actually lived and experienced),
but transposes them and gives them a dreamlike and often
deliberately sadistic dimension.
It is interesting to see how painters of the young genera-
Above Cesare Tacchi
Picture for a happy couple 1965 tion have a re-awakened interest in what one could call
39 3/8 x 47 1/4 in. `literary content'. This is true of Adami and Ceroli and
even more of Simonetti, who has recently attracted
Below Mario Ceroli
The piper 1965 attention with a series of striking canvases which exploit
79 3/4- x 79 3/4 in. a combination of collage techniques and minute calli-
Below right Tano Festa graphic draughtsmanship. His work is characterized by a
After Michelangelo-detail of the Medici Tomb 1965 very rigorous formal composition, recalling the syntax of
Enamel on canvas
59 x 79 3/4 in. 'neo-plastic' painting; but its main interest lies in its