[1]Should anyone think improvisations on themes and lines of themes are only the prerogative of instrumentalists, they have only to see what Alessandro Papetti has come up with in his larger than life size paintings on water, wind and the woods. Quite like a singer who takes advantage of his liberty to improvise on any or all parts of the line that take his fancy, he set about harnessing the energies of these in shaping his gigantic circular monoliths as 360 degree oils on canvas. With fascinating variations in his brushstrokes that ranged from emphatic and sweeping as statements to subtle and delicate as in water colour he made his declarations imaginatively exciting and artistically palatable.
Like an able relaxed driver taking wide curves with ease, the curvature of the earth or the horizons of the sea, the paintings went such a neat full circle thematically and literally that it was hard to imagine they were ever painted in part or ever existed flat horizontal or vertical. Was there a starting point and a point of completion, we wondered, so bathed in each theme and so enveloped in each scene were we. The fluency of the moving voice of the waters and the vigour of the wind shaped it all, painting as if in that very form. Reminiscent of the fresco painters of Italy’s most magnificent domes, the modern equivalent of this age in character of course, the works planetariumlike had an amplitude of their own that enabled one to see beyond the expanding contours and the dissolutions of formal boundaries until we experienced an infinity within the circumscribed moment, the defined space contours.
Sparkling wine in hand (a welldeserved reception for the artist underway), it was easy to talk to the maestro who revealed some of the secrets behind his art and talked of the technique and labour that went into the works making them what they are. Of the circular canvas on water Il Cerchio dell’ Acqua painted in 2008-2009 which is 3.30X26m long, he stated with a ring of satisfaction to his voice, “I have been working on the theme of water for ten years, so this stems from that long experience and has that history within each drop. There were no sketches preliminary or otherwise, no drawing on the canvas. I directly applied the colour onto the canvas. Prussian blue, maroons and black largely, some brown to warm the colours of the sea’s very extreme blue”. The artist confirmed that it was a night scene, “I used small tracks to make the movement visible and lend it speed and energy. However the water cycle is infinitely softer as a work than the wind”. On the symbolism inherent in the painting and the subject in focus, he was willing to expound, “Water is soft, gentle and therapeutic. It interacts with man and gives him much. It is around us, it encloses us, it contains. In a kindly manner...”
In contrast to the one upon water, within which the scene is vertically arranged, the Cerchio Del Vento ( the wind circle) is laid out horizontally although the canvases look identical in shape and size. You enter the works as you would a circular round room. And experience them from within. The experience is heightened at moments when you are alone as a number of effects surface. The wind canvas has a sweeping force to it, a breadth of vision and scope but also the literal windscape force of movement as with its speed the wind transforms the landscape. The artist confirmed the scene is landbased with clusters of plants and weeds but equally desolate. Replete with energy and movement, the many colours emerge and appear to move in one direction. In fact the artist added, “I have used a variety of colours in this canvas, very many more than in the water circle, drawn upon the whole spectrum practically. The brush strokes are also very long some of them for the wind carries away. Wind interacts with man but also takes a part of us away with it elsewhere, thus uniting the world in a way. This has a centrifugal energy if you see what I mean and is harsher and more vibrant than the water circle. Wind moves with a speed, has energy and carries something from each of us away”. The windswept scene in its interwoven purples, blues, mauves, magentas, reds and browns is both energising and devastating in its cycle of give and take. The lone figure transfixed in the midst of that movement although windwashed is the one vestige of stillness that resists the force that whirls through and overcomes the scene. Il Cerchio Del Vento, 3.30x26m. oil on canvas, 2008-2009, was a sequel to the water cycle.
The exhibition that opened on the 1st of September in Rome in the elegant foyer of the Auditorium’s Sala Sinopoli and is on until the 14th. only had its enormously successful run at the Palazzo Reale in Milan where in addition to the two themes exhibited in Rome was the third on the forest circle where the overwhelming interiors of the forest mesmerise. However in the Rome exhibition we have in addition to the water and wind circles two oils on canvas 1.95x3.20m stylistically akin to the wind circle placed across each other as point-counterpoint.
Alessandro Papetti who is featured in this year’s Venice Biennale in the Italian Pavilion curated by Sgarbi spoke on his paintings and participation there. “Yes, I have a painting of mine in Venice. It is a nude, of a woman who comes out of a scene like this”, says he, pointing to one of the two framed exhibits presented in this exhibition along with the all-enveloping circles. “Nudes are important to me”, he adds with a clinical finality. And then mentions, “I also have a painting in the Cuban Pavilion. I was invited by the Cubans to exhibit. They had four artists from Italy and four Cuban artists represented at Venice in their pavilion. This one is an urban scene. Since 2005 I have been doing cityscapes in which I use the theme of velocity, momentum, things happening”.
Exploratory exhibitions such as this one organised by Art4Communication [2], with their theme specific resonance, invariably captivate the imagination and heart of the viewer.