DUCCIO TRAVAGLIA – 30 June 1985
Being an artist means wearing different hats: being oneself, the other, reality, time, fantasy, history and certainly the synthesis of all the above translated into poetry. The musician’s writing is represented by the notes on the pentagram, that of the narrator by his words, but that of the visual artist has multiple expressive possibilities. The artist’s writing is not only a sign with or without color, but also the engraving on a stone, the carving of a wood, the assembly of objects, the gluing of fragments, the hammering on a metal surface, the reproduction of an image and so on. In short, this is the only form of expression that does not require mediation (the composer necessarily requires a performer, the novelist a publisher) but that can offer equal sensations with different techniques. The scope of this simple preamble is to suggest the unlimited options available to the artist when he wants to express a concept. Giovanna Bruschi’s choice has been the etching process – known to be a very difficult medium for anyone – as a way of experiencing her own poetic inspiration by means of a technique among the most ancient, complex and suggestive available. However, this young artist develops her interests not as a definitive and absolute adhesion to an application and to a procedural discipline but as a privileged method to expose her aesthetic convictions. Bruschi’s works are populated by flowers, shrubs, meditations, landscapes, mysteries outside the boundaries of theorems or seductions. There is neither a controlled rigor nor a chaotic exasperation, no sheer sensuality or any commercial affiliation, but only a poetic taste that escapes from literary concerns and illustrative limitations to organize itself in a fertile and harmonious correlation of stylistic traits delightfully incorporated in the luminous territories of feeling. Bruschi’s images are not exacerbated by any irrational impulse or any figurative cliché, in that she interprets nature and matter, voices and distances not with the subversive desire for transgression, but with the coherent examples offered by pure melody. The artist’s rendition of flowers, leaves and bushes, is a revisitation of nature through the rhythms of a chaste, sweet, comforting sound , almost an arpeggio, as if parts of ancient songs written by memory. There are no special concessions, no formal virtuosity, no narrative sophistication that can be detected in Bruschi’s etchings, but only the pleasure of contemplation from within and a frankness to join an open dialogue that does not require special effects but invites a narrative formulated by an accessible, enjoyable eloquence. We therefore do not detect any correlation with any academic standard but, more precisely, only a measure of judgment fertile with convincing motivations and free from the chains of formal and static scholarship. Bruschi is attempting to present an attractive chapter full of fantastic essays, designed with intense shading, patterns and lines, contrasts and spatial expansions, ornaments and tracing modulations, asymmetrical compositions that give free rein to lyric and musical passion. From this fertile portfolio of images, ranging from luminous horizons to almost millimetric miniatures of a microcosm populated by a delicate knowledge, from the fragrant accords of nature to the mystical invocations of souls who seem to be part of esoteric mysteries, Giovanna Bruschi mixes each element by virtue of her discreet, silent poetry exclusively reserved to those who believe in beauty, who reenact the nostalgia of a former state of bliss, and to those who translate their dreams into harmony.
