I am fully aware of the profound and inseparable link that, for me, unites art making and memory work, so much so that I feel the need to declare it openly, already in the titles of the works, through the reference to Agendas – a theme I have often spoken about.
It is a subjective and conscious memory, a filter through which I rework experiences and emotions in search of their possible translation into reality.
In recent months, however, I have also begun to reflect on another form of memory: an unconscious and cultural memory, which has emerged thanks to stimulating confrontations with critics and artists.
The symbolic legacy in art
There is talk in the art world of “symbolic inheritance”-a fascinating concept that describes a profound kind of influence that cannot be reduced to direct quotation or conscious homage.
Many artists do not mention the past: they bring it in.
The symbolic legacy acts as a collective visual memory, which resurfaces in works without needing to be stated.
Each of us is formed in taste, sensibility and values within certain cultural environments. These become an integral part of our identity. Forms, images, compositional patterns and meanings belonging to our own visual tradition can resurface in artistic work even without explicit intention, paths of inspiration internalized over time.
Theo van Doesburg – Composition, 1917.
Gino Severini- Le Boulevard, 1911.
Unexpected resonances with great masters
This is how, thanks to Vittorio Sgarbi, I recognized in some of my works a resonance with Kandinsky and Azari; talking with the director Biello, an unexpected assonance with the dynamism of the Futurists; and reflecting in solitude I continue to discover how the great masters I have loved and studied in the past work silently within me.
Not models to imitate, but inner presences.
Their images, their gestures, their formal tensions are a memory that does not ask to be remembered, because it has never been forgotten.
A statement of gratitude
Of course, I do not want nor can I approach the great artists of the past, nor to place my work on the same level as theirs. On the contrary.Discovering in my works traces of their legacy fills my heart with a great gratitude and almost a sense of sweetness: that of one who glimpses, far away, the lights of home.