Page 30 - Studio International - September 1973

upon a series of paintings which enable us to as the continuous dynamism of rhythms in useless and distracting work in respect of art.
catch his innermost secret: on gouaches and space, as surprise, as the fundamental clarity `Colour is not oil, tempera, watercolour. The
minor paintings, (precisely because they are exercised by a prestigious skill. While in these plastic harmony of space is indifferent to
such, showing a freedom and a much more figurative sculptures, along with their plaster, marble and bronze. The way a Doric
direct emotive intensity) and by virtue of these, chromatic values, it is the modelling that column occupies space does not vary if painted
the much larger works and the series of mural suggests movement, with the 1934 abstract plaster is substituted for marble. The love of
paintings appear to us in a singular light. sculptures, exhibited at the Milione the materials (sensuality, handling) has nothing
The Dutch neoplastic premises have here following year, all is reduced to lines and to do with art.'
been overcome; the structure is fugal with coloured surfaces, rhythmically occupying the Melotti shows a profound sympathy for the
inversions and transpositions, internally open. space. The constructivist influence becomes a ideas of Belli in these affirmations, and, linking
Above all, colour and a concrete resolution of series of impulses that presuppose a continuous up with the idea of a classical origin,
light are new, uncovering still more refined dialogue with the material, a tense vitalism. purposefully contrary to any emotional
atmospheric vibrations, even though one may Behind these sculptures, which established intervention, to any naturalism and even to any
not talk of tone, strictly and truly, since the their newness so decisively in the climate of the irrational hedonism, composed sculptures under
language is subtly cadenced in its resonance. time by the deliberate abandonment of the a constructivist influence, clear in the rhythm of
The refinement of these harmonies creates an traditional third dimension, there is the their spaces. But evidently, in the most creative
allusive movement that uncovers the painter's cultivation of linearity, of draughtsmanship, works, even if involuntarily, a subtle sense of
early Lombard formation: certain passages already abstract in its incisiveness and surprise, a sense of unforeseeable colour for the
lightly nuanced, and, above all, a sonority in the symbolism as in the drawings of Wildt, spatial references, could not be eliminated:
colour, that makes us hear the silences, the Fontana's teacher; and there is also, above all, Sculpture n. 21, in metal, Sculpture n. 15,
spontaneous poetry, beyond accidental the most inspired movement operating in plaster, Sculpture n. 17, in metal, Bas
appearance; the secret surprise not at a environmentally. Fontana's `spazialismo' was Relief n. 16, in plaster, all 1935, more than
particular image, but at a total, pantheistic sense to develop from these irrational premises, Sculpture 1934, which appears somewhat
of relations. Yet again it is a question of poetic perhaps most exemplified in the series of calligraphic, reveal rhythms, rigorous but not
revelation, the intense urgency of this voice `tavolette grafite' (lead tablets) on which from preconceived, and are certainly among the
crying out through continuous mental 1931 he had anticipated the 'informal' post-war first Italian examples of an austerely abstract
intervention, and taking nothing away from climate. plastic art, operating like the rational
sensual effectiveness. It is not out of place to The position of Fausto Melotti was very architecture in which they sought a setting.
speak directly of 'moods'. Such is the singular different. His abstract sculptures, exhibited Even the sculpture of Radice, Rho,
monody replying to the secret demands of during the same year as Fontana's, corresponded Aldo Galli and others among the first Italian
Radice. to a rigorous severity, upheld by rationalist abstract artists, intended as variations of their
To the Como group, Manlio Rho, Carla control. Geometry had become the primary pictorial conception, always required a clear
Badiali and Aldo Galli also belonged; and with material of every composition. architectonic setting. The true proposals of
Radice and the architect Terragni they worked Melotti himself wrote in the catalogue of his abstract sculpture, and of painting, too, were
in a climate of cultural renewal. Manlio Rho, Milione exhibition, 'Art is the geometric mood. not intended as pure lyricism, but have always
as well as Badiali and Galli demonstrated in It appeals to the intellect and not to the senses. been concerned with this relationship with the
non-figurative works a consistency of rhythmic For this reason no importance can be given to new rational architecture, with precise,
relationships, as in architecture stemming from brushwork in painting, to modelling in luminous spaces from which all rhetoric is
neo-plasticism and invented forms in clean sculpture (fingerprints of the personality — the absent. q
vibrant colours, without any individualistic expressive touch useless to art: the most Translated by Toni del Renzio
predominance, serenely detached, of a severe appropriate instrument for contrapuntal music
mental discipline, with subtle chromatic is the organ, without touch).
assonances. `Modulation, not modelling, is important,
It should not be forgotten that various This is not a pun (in Italian modellazione and
futurists, from Prampolini to Munari, created modulazione. Trans.) Modelling comes from Translator's notes.
1Terragni, Lingeri, and Pagano. Architects
abstract works, as well as such artists as model . . . nature . . . disorder; modulation from prominent in the MAR (Movement for Rational
Alberto Magnelli and Giacomo Balla whose module . . . canon . . . order. The crystal puts a Architecture).
Iridescent Compenetration of 1912 should be spell on nature. Terragni's Casa del Popolo (ex-Fascio), Como, is
one of the masterpieces of modern architecture. He
considered among the first European `The fundamentals of plastic harmony and committed suicide during the war and was thought
geometric abstract works. counterpoint are found in geometry . . . The to be too disillusioned with Fascism.
But as far as the climate of Milan in the architecture of the Greeks, the painting of Pagano, from Trieste, moved to Milan and
collaborated with the critic Persico in the review
nineteen thirties is concerned, there are two Piero della Francesca, the music of Bach, Casabella. He moved from supporting Fascism to
more artists who showed at the Galleria del rational architecture, are exact arts. The active opposition, dying in a German
concentration camp.
Milione in 1935, Lucio Fontana and Fausto forma mentis of their creators is a mathematical Nizzoli, a designer associated with Persico and
I do not make
Melotti, who offered the most extreme example s forma mends. For them
with MAR. He designed some of Olivetti's most
of pre-war abstract sculpture. about 2, but 2 neither more nor less. It is not famous typewriters, and, with Persico, the Parker
Pen Shop.
Fontana's abstraction — even when as in now admissible to think of an art without the 2Edoardo Persico. Like Veronesi, an opponent of
White, Rose and Black Sculpture and Sculpture consciousness of the necessary foundations to Fascism from the beginning. Prudence dictated his
in Black Cement, both of 1934, he seems to rely possess the counterpoint of this art. Because of tactics. Apart from editing Casabella with Pagano,
upon constructivism — is the product of poetic this, abstract works of art which are still a wrote many texts on art, the last before his death
being on Fontana.
inspiration, of an unpredictable movement in problem of taste (it's a high percentage) will be 3Ezio D'Errico, like Veronesi, had a strong interest in
space, and a vitality that overcomes, opposes absolutely disowned. Abstract art cannot be the graphic arts, and his most important work was in
that field where he advanced the idea of
even, every preconception. The contrast made through mere sympathy . .
'architettura del libro' (architecture of the book) — the
between figurative and abstract in Fontana's Renouncing the representation of the proposition that books should be as precisely
work is groundless, since the figurative, when it naturalistic world is less difficult than designed as buildings.
4`Metaphysical', with a capital M, is a reference to the
exists, as in the coloured plaster sculptures of the renouncing the love of the materials in which Scuola Metafisica, a movement in painting
same period, is a pretext : it moves, it operates one works. Yet it is properly this which is a initiated by De Chirico.