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Lot Essay
‘Sarebbe una facile tentazione parlare di surrealismo per queste recenti tele di Angeli. Le “presenze” che lentamente affiorano attraverso la rete sottile che come una buccia ricopre e avvolge il quadro, e nel loro stesso modo di offrirsi allo sguardo sembrano avere quel tanto di magico, larvale e, diremmo, medianico, da rendere plausibile una frettolosa chiamata in causa dell’inconscio del sogno. Plausibule, abbiamo scritto, ma non legittima. Non legittima, poichè la vera natura di queste forme “in divenire” (sono accenni di forme, tentativi di forme, conati di un attonito colore-materia che non riesce a configurarsi in forme definite) non appartiene al trascendente al metafisico. Il mondo di Angeli è terrestre come è terrestre la memoria (e la nostalgia) dell’uomo. Nostalgia “visiva”, nostalgia, appunto, di forme. Una nostalgia non evocatrice di fantomatiche apparizioni, da un “al di là” che non ci appartiene, che non è “dentro” di noi, ma rammemorante (con mestizia e pudore) fatti umani e concreti: sofferenze, gioie, trasalimenti e dolori, ancora una volta “forme”.
Rotto lo schema informale burriano, attraverso il velo sottile ma tenace della materia, Angeli recupera pazientemente — mille volte interrompendosi, perdendo la traccia e tosto riconquistandola — le “forme” del suo sentimento. Una difficile impresa, poichè una volta afferrata la forma si dissolve, non ne rimane che l’impalpabile alone: polvere d’ali, nostalgia, “assenza”. Ed è questa “assenza”, d’una forma così acutamente rimpianta e così spietatamente rinnegata dalla rete in cui Angeli vuole rinchiuderla, ad affiorare alla superficie del quadro. Un brivido: una vita che urge timida e si estenua nel silenzio. Non le “cose”, ma le lagrime delle cose’.
(C. Vivaldi, Franco Angeli, cat. mostra a Roma, Galleria La Salita, gennaio 1960)
‘One might easily be tempted to speak of surrealism on the subject of these recent canvases by Angeli. Gently emerging through a mesh like covering and wrapping round the painting, the ‘presences’ and the very way they offer themselves to the visitor’s gaze seem to have that hint of the spellbinding, spectral and, we might say, mediumistic, to justify a plausible reference to the unconsciousness of dream. Plausible, but not legitimate.
Not legitimate, because the true nature of these ‘unfolding’ forms does not belong to the transcendental and the metaphysical (there are hinted forms, attempted forms, and convulsions of stalled paint-color never configured as definite forms). Angeli’s world is earthly just as the memory (and nostalgia) of the human is earthly. ‘Visual’ nostalgia, thus nostalgia of forms. A nostalgia not evocative of elusive apparitions, from an ‘afterlife’ to which we do not belong, which is not ‘inside’ us, but which reminds us (with melancholy and modesty) of human and concrete facts: suffering, joys, shocks and pains, yet again ‘forms’.
Having broken with the model of Burri and Arte informale, through the thin but tenacious veil of material, Angeli patiently recovers — interrupting his work thousands of times, losing the trace and immediately reacquiring it — the ‘forms’ of his feeling. This is a difficult undertaking since once form is grasped, it dissolves, and all that is left is the impalpable aura: dust from wings, nostalgia ‘absence’. And it is this ‘absence’ of a form so acutely mourned and so mercilessly denied by the mesh in which Angeli wants to enclose it that emerges on the surface of the painting. A shiver: a life that timidly drives us on and is worn out in silence. Not ‘things’, but the tears of things’.
(C. Vivaldi, Franco Angeli, exh. cat. in Rome, Galleria La Salita, January 1960)
Rotto lo schema informale burriano, attraverso il velo sottile ma tenace della materia, Angeli recupera pazientemente — mille volte interrompendosi, perdendo la traccia e tosto riconquistandola — le “forme” del suo sentimento. Una difficile impresa, poichè una volta afferrata la forma si dissolve, non ne rimane che l’impalpabile alone: polvere d’ali, nostalgia, “assenza”. Ed è questa “assenza”, d’una forma così acutamente rimpianta e così spietatamente rinnegata dalla rete in cui Angeli vuole rinchiuderla, ad affiorare alla superficie del quadro. Un brivido: una vita che urge timida e si estenua nel silenzio. Non le “cose”, ma le lagrime delle cose’.
(C. Vivaldi, Franco Angeli, cat. mostra a Roma, Galleria La Salita, gennaio 1960)
‘One might easily be tempted to speak of surrealism on the subject of these recent canvases by Angeli. Gently emerging through a mesh like covering and wrapping round the painting, the ‘presences’ and the very way they offer themselves to the visitor’s gaze seem to have that hint of the spellbinding, spectral and, we might say, mediumistic, to justify a plausible reference to the unconsciousness of dream. Plausible, but not legitimate.
Not legitimate, because the true nature of these ‘unfolding’ forms does not belong to the transcendental and the metaphysical (there are hinted forms, attempted forms, and convulsions of stalled paint-color never configured as definite forms). Angeli’s world is earthly just as the memory (and nostalgia) of the human is earthly. ‘Visual’ nostalgia, thus nostalgia of forms. A nostalgia not evocative of elusive apparitions, from an ‘afterlife’ to which we do not belong, which is not ‘inside’ us, but which reminds us (with melancholy and modesty) of human and concrete facts: suffering, joys, shocks and pains, yet again ‘forms’.
Having broken with the model of Burri and Arte informale, through the thin but tenacious veil of material, Angeli patiently recovers — interrupting his work thousands of times, losing the trace and immediately reacquiring it — the ‘forms’ of his feeling. This is a difficult undertaking since once form is grasped, it dissolves, and all that is left is the impalpable aura: dust from wings, nostalgia ‘absence’. And it is this ‘absence’ of a form so acutely mourned and so mercilessly denied by the mesh in which Angeli wants to enclose it that emerges on the surface of the painting. A shiver: a life that timidly drives us on and is worn out in silence. Not ‘things’, but the tears of things’.
(C. Vivaldi, Franco Angeli, exh. cat. in Rome, Galleria La Salita, January 1960)