PERUGIA, MARCH 25, 2011
Giovanna Bruschi on Ornella Zuccherini
“Limpide atmosfere”
For artists, the main objective is to be able to capture light. Probably the watercolor technique seems to be among the best methods to obtain quite significant results in this regard, but with different effects, since it is the artist’s personality that is emerging during this process, seeking a unique identity through technical solutions. In the case of painter Ornella Zuccherini the signs that distinguish her work follow first and foremost a study of her subjects, tentatively penciled in order to outline the profiles. It follows an interaction formed by chromatic areas expanded on the damp sheet with decisive strokes and a spontaneous gesture, as if caressing the surface due to the veiling effect rendered by the transparencies that only watercolors can give back.
The artist’s selected subjects are carefully chosen to arouse in the observer a pleasant aesthetic response. Yet, it is in nature that Ornella finds her inspiration, a particularly significant example is the painting that presents a path along the sides of a hill covered with lavender tufts; one can even feel the fragrance of spirituality as if this path had been predisposed to sing a song to the Seraphic Saint Francis, who made his Gospel of creation
Perugia ,AUGUST 19 2011
Giovanna Bruschi on Maria Antonietta Giannini
Approaching art proves in itself the change that involves seeing, outside of oneself, the traces and the signs of one are being, and contributes to hone sensitivity in our social intercourse with the public.
This premise to enter, tiptoeing, the art world of Maria Antoinette Giannini, conceived by the artist as a refuge – a liberation from daily worries, with the urgency to suspend time in her canvas, and therefore interpreted as pleasure or serenity for a place or a situation. The values of life, family, and faith are the foundation of themes identified to express her inner cry. Giannini’s paintings are a recollection of rural environments, farmhouses that invite us to collect traces of history, glimpses of city streets, alleys, small squares, landscapes and urban complexes outlined on the horizon with the presence of humanity at work with great dynamism .
The artist manages to mold her pictorial surfaces offering an impalpable lightness of air that envelops everything; it is as if the painting is aware of different atmospheres and climatic conditions. The wind is the real protagonist of these paintings, which the artist manages to recreate by reproducing the effects of motion, bearing in mind the motion of nature and its own essence.
The control of her brushstrokes, along with the secure and vibrant contours of her works, do not imitate the past, as it would be easy to suggest, but they are charged with immediate and fresh chromatic backgrounds, as if highlighted by musical notes while maintaining the clear and perfumed effect of an atmosphere that envelops everything with a pleasant joy.
Perugia, MARCH 12 2011
Giovanna Bruschi on Barsanofio Ariano
Acquerelli
Seasonal watercolors, lights and sensations
“Galleria Sansalù al Borgo”
Art is spirit, revelation, but also technique, and a combination of science and rationality; these characteristics are visible in the watercolors by Ariano Barsanofio, where color, as light, becomes a means of communication through the elements of the composition, in order to produce brightness values, and by manage the character and the effect that distinguish the accidental from the essential.
Perugia, DECEMBER 16 2011
Giovanna Bruschi on Alfredo De Poi
…
Un secolo, un giorno, un minuto
non fa differenza.
Vedere un istante
illumina tutto.
Questi i versi di Alfredo, sintesi perfetta della vita.
Coincidono con la frase della Beata Angela da Foligno, dal Memoriale:
“E vidi Dio”. “… divenni NON AMORE”.
Ora Alfredo è Tutto nel Tutto, mentre per noi è promessa e speranza.These are Alfredo’s verses, a perfect synthesis of life. They coincide with the sentence of Blessed Angela of Foligno, from the Memorial: “And I saw God”. “… I became NOT LOVE”.
Now Alfredo is part of the universal “All in All”, interpreted as promise and hope
Perugia, FEBRUARY 12 2006
Giovanna Bruschi, Acronimi Ritratti, Personale di Angelo Buonumori
After so many years (since college days), I am pleasantly surprised and thrilled to see artist Angelo Buonumori’s exhibition featured in the halls of the “Cannoniera” area inside the Rocca Paolina in Perugia, an attractive architectural setting converted into an exposition space for cultural events as well as a pedestrian walkway to reach the historic city center. The space is very suggestive, and in this instance we can really define it as a true alliance between architecture and painting.
“Acronimi Ritratti” is the title of the exhibition that intends to be a research on portraiture. The subjects that emerge from large surfaces are painted on bright white canvases and create a strong visual impact, certainly intentional, considering the austere setting of the rooms. In every painting by Angelo Buonumori the inner character of the models is revealed through a typical expression or a singular attitude, as if characters borrowed from a novel or a theater play. Although they are convincing representations, they nevertheless represent only partial aspects of the complexities in a human being. “I had a profound desire to return to painting … “, are Angelo’s words. And, in fact, as we look at his works we perceive the pleasure conveyed by these magnificent paintings; the images are still frozen in a sort of hieratic attitudes as they were painted in the past. Everything is imbued with time as the present and the past are strikingly evident in a systematic play interpreted by selected characters. In regard to the structure of his paintings, the artist has chosen black lines on a white background aimed at following the contours of the figures, perhaps to bring out the painted face, in order to highlight contemporary emptiness and – through a more suggestive reading – past protagonists returned from the ancient past in the shape of ghosts, such as the members of the Baglioni family, recycled as caricatures of current political personalities, or as. characters and friends of Angelo Buonumori. Everything seems possible and awe-inspiring, as in a reenactment of a contemporary Palazzo that romantically proposes in the canvas a sort of updated court in which public figures, friends, family, dressed like lords of the Renaissance, take us back to Perugia in the Renaissance. Ultimately, we should not underestimate the technical formulas presented by Angelo, that wish to harmoniously combine painting and photography: the photographic portrait that depends on the pictorial surface or vice versa, the relative connection (not so much theoretical as taste) between the reproduction of the model and its idealization, that is, between history and poetry. Consequently, the protagonist of the portrayed character emerges as a hero. A technical virtuoso like Angelo, an expert in the latest media, has been able to study and enhance the new space-time frontiers by creating artificial environments, metaphors of the world – with which the user can interact the perception of space with the concepts of presence and absence – and take advantage of a technology that allows one to circumvent the physical distance between people. So thank you Angelo for this wonderful gift, rather than just an exhibition, an incentive to seek within us values that are so often professed but rarely acted out.
Perugia, JUNE 06 2005
Giovanna Bruschi, Un Amico Incisore, Testimonials on Father Diego Donati, La Postierla Cultural Association, Perugia, Guerra Edizioni, December 2005, pp. 5 – 41.
I feel a delightful sensation mixed with emotion in remembering Father Diego Donati, whom I used to call “Diegone” for his body size. I remember his large hands mimicking the movements as well as his words when he would explain me: “… you have to caress the plate, as if it were a person …”. And he would then kiss the matrix, ready for printing, this being his way of welcoming a new presence into the world. There was really ‘love’ in the gestures of Father Diego, in his words of exceptional humanity and his most precious teachings. Observing the graphic result I assimilated not only the technique, but also the expressive force that arose from the chosen subjects: objects composed as still lifes, landscapes made with extremely fine lines connecting and interlacing. His typical traits were the unique manner of rendering spatial areas and spiritual themes – the main source of his imagination – by exploring the depths and the surface expansions, while evoking the most profound experiences in our lives that still today impress our memory and lead us to improve our communications, relationships and actions. I like to remember Father Diego in his laboratory at the Monteripido Convent where, surrounded by the warmth of many friends and colleagues, he was always available for listening and dispensing advice. I still feel his presence and this is a great comfort to me.]
Perugia, NOVEMBER 19 2006
Giovanna Bruschi, reflections on Alberto Schiavi
“Visioni oniriche” di Alberto Schiavi
This is a recent meeting with Alberto Schiavi, a pleasant encounter with the man and the artist..
His aesthetic goals, which are not based on rules, but on pure perception, aided by intuition and introspection, recall the meditation on color derived from Paul Klee, one of the finest introspective painters; and it is a meditation extended to the whole range of colors that Alberto Schiavi conducts almost orchestrating a pictorial symphony.
The chromatic ranges are controlled, subdued, and become absolute “blades of light”, of his “dream visions” which they constitute its character and effect.
Perugia, NOVEMBER 26 2006.
Giovanna Bruschi, riflessioni on Colombo Manuelli
LUCE/NOTTE
Perugia, Rocca Paolina, NOVEMBER 17/26 2006-11-26
I was delighted! You managed to free the pure energy of those who managed to understand the “other” dimension. The material objects and their volumes seem to be a distant memory. You try to sculpt an inexpressible, invisible dimension, and you project this new message from the depths of your soul, to reawaken in us the value of your precious research. In the mighty and dark fortress of the Rocca Paolina the voice of the ocean attracts the bystanders. You can hear the deep sound of the waves in the undertow and the continuous slow movement of the sea which, in my opinion, takes on a cosmic value. You use water, precious nourishment, at once material and spiritual, and you remind us that such is also our nature. You demonstrate to you have entered the space of the “invisible truth” where the “I” grows in an immeasurable way, striving for the perfection of being, where the courage of the pioneer is found in the search for a language capable of satisfying the perception of the senses.
So, in order to direct the observer on your inner journey, you quote a thought by Parmenides (fragment 5) “imprisoned in a crown of luminous circumference”, a stimulating and subjective path, an invitation to meditation as a new beginning.
Thank you for your gift.
Perugia, OCTOBER 30 2007
Giovanna Bruschi on Daniele Mancini
“La materia scabra e porosa come sostanza della forma”
Consistent with his generous and popular instinct, deliberately ignoring every formal rule, Daniele Mancini has been sculpting olive wood and stone in all its varieties since 1991, delivering simple, unadorned but essential works made with an expressive authenticity, faithful to the image itself, and not superimposed as a superficial mold.
The evasion and adherence of thematic choices is total and absolute. It provides ancestral suggestions with a primary value
Perugia, FEBRUARY 16 2009
Giovanna Bruschi on Marco Pedetta Jensen
AMORE x AMORE
It is not easy to place the pictorial work of Marco Pedetta Jensen in an historical and artistic context. One could indicate a possible affinity with the New Dada, characterized by the use of objects of daily consumption, by the process of assembly or re-elaboration of characteristic elements of mass communication: “The work of art must not represent the beauty that is dead” wrote Tzara in the Dada manifesto of 1918. For Jensen the canvas is the place where he can give free rein to his dreams, express the beauty, purity, freshness, freedom that is within him. Jensen does not hide behind complex mechanisms, or by philosophizing; he possesses a pure, true and autonomous instinct as an artist without rules; he behaves as a happy child when he resorts to random fragments and objects on his canvas, to create new worlds, as if the real support would be a table covered with disconnected elements following an inner logic, painted with brushstrokes or bathed in color to give his protagonists a new look and a different meaning.
The exhibition features several games, faithful friends of his childhood, resting on the ground to follow at an angle the line of conjunction of the three floors that circumscribe the installation. The contact with the floor, read symbolically as if it were the world, reality, is sublimated with the ideal, configured by the vertical wall where, in the upward momentum, one can experience the cathartic moment to which the artist dramatically aspires, while remaining anchored to his dreams.
