Raffaele de Grada
Italian writer, art critic and politician
Raffaele De Grada called "the Raffaellino" (Zurich, 28 February 1916 - Milan, 1 October 2010) was an Italian art critic, art historian and politician.
Quotes edit
- Umberto Pettinicchio si colloca in un contesto che rifiuta la soluzione estetica come unificante del rapporto tra l'uomo e il mondo. Per il modo in cui Pettinicchio traduce nel segno le immagini che contraddicono la banale oggettività della visione e per l'intensità con cui rifiuta il facile accostamento cromatico, pacificatore estetico della tensione dei contenuti, l'artista ci pone in un'immediatezza comunicativa che egli fa una distinzione tra tutta la serie di pittori che gli sono formalmente imparentati ma che restano in una vaghezza dalla quale Pettinicchio è decisamente estraneo. Immediatezza ma non facilità di comunicazione. Se non riuscite a capire la suggestione che ci viene da queste dense opere di Pettinicchio, così diverse da tutta la pittura che ci arriva dall'Ottocento. Comunicare non è facile....si tratta di capire, al di là della verosimiglianza delle forme, qual è il contenuto interno che le anima.
- Umberto Pettinicchio places himself in a context that rejects the aesthetic solution as unifying the relationship between man and the world. For the way Pettinicchio translates into the sign the images that contradict the banal objectivity of vision and for the intensity with which he rejects the easy chromatic combination, aesthetic pacifier of the tension of the contents, the artist puts us in an immediacy of communication that he makes a distinction between the whole series of painters who are formally related to him but who remain in a vagueness from which Pettinicchio is decidedly alien. Immediacy but not ease of communication. If you are not able to understand the suggestion that comes to us from these dense works by Pettinicchio, so different from all the painting that comes down to us from the nineteenth century. Communication is not easy [...] it is a question of understanding, beyond the verisimilitude of the forms, what is the internal content that animates them.
- Raffaellino De Grada, Le Anatomie di Pettinicchio, 1975
- Umberto Pettinicchio places himself in a context that rejects the aesthetic solution as unifying the relationship between man and the world. For the way Pettinicchio translates into the sign the images that contradict the banal objectivity of vision and for the intensity with which he rejects the easy chromatic combination, aesthetic pacifier of the tension of the contents, the artist puts us in an immediacy of communication that he makes a distinction between the whole series of painters who are formally related to him but who remain in a vagueness from which Pettinicchio is decidedly alien. Immediacy but not ease of communication. If you are not able to understand the suggestion that comes to us from these dense works by Pettinicchio, so different from all the painting that comes down to us from the nineteenth century. Communication is not easy [...] it is a question of understanding, beyond the verisimilitude of the forms, what is the internal content that animates them.
- La crisi dell’arte moderna ha un termine di confronto basilare: la considerazione del corpo umano. in un saggio del 1971 su Hans Bellmer, Patrick Waldberg racconta, da una novella di Alfonso Allais, la storia di un pascià che moriva di noia. Gli portano una vergine deliziosa ma la noia non stacca. Il pascià si fa spogliare dagli eunuchi la verginella ma niente da fare neanche con la nudità completa.”spogliatela ancora”, dice il pascià. E le guardie la scorticarono. A quel punto il pascià ritornò un uomo.
- De fabula docet, si potrebbe dire a molti artisti contemporanei [...]. Non è soltanto questione di stanchezze sessuali. Il problema è più largo e ci domandiamo se non siano gli uomini più distanti da quella visione della primavera eterna che si versava sulle forme virili dell’Apollo del Belvedere nella limpida estasi del Winckelmann. Ogni classicismo sembra ormai caduto, ma con esso anche l’uomo nella sua integrità ideale. Il dentro ha distrutto il fuori, le viscere hanno preso il posto degli arti, il fuoco interno ha bruciato il corpo e, togliendo a noi il bene della contemplazione, ci ha lasciato soltanto le ceneri dell’anima.Se questo conflitto tra angoscia e ragione estetica riguarda tutte le arti, nel campo della pittura e della scultura si addensa sulla fisicità stessa del corpo umano. L’architetto può mutare il suo linguaggio quanto vuole, può costruire alveari umani piuttosto che città giardino, ma sempre un’abitazione dovrà erigere, qualcosa che sia più o meno funzionale all’uomo in società. Il pittore e lo scultore no, essi godono della libertà di spaesare la visione oggettiva in qualsiasi luogo e tempo e questa libertà sembra l’unica conquista dell’oggi, terribile, spesso amara, conquista. Umberto Pettinicchio vive e opera nella dimensione di questa conquista. La sua pittura non ci racconta nè la natura nè degli uomini oggettivamente intesi.
- The crisis of modern art has a basic term of comparison: the consideration of the human body. in a 1971 essay on Hans Bellmer, Patrick Waldberg tells the story of a pasha who died of boredom from a novella by Alfonso Allais. They bring him a delicious virgin but boredom doesn't stop. The pasha has the virgin undressed by the eunuchs but nothing happens even with complete nudity. "Undress her again", says the pasha. And the guards skinned her. At that point the pasha became a man again.
- De fabula docet, one could say to many contemporary artists [...] It's not just a matter of sexual tiredness. The problem is wider and we wonder if men are not the furthest from that vision of eternal spring that poured over the virile forms of the Apollo del Belvedere in the limpid ecstasy of Winckelmann. All classicism now seems to have fallen, but with it also man in his ideal integrity. The inside has destroyed the outside, the bowels have taken the place of the limbs, the internal fire has burned the body and, taking away from us the good of contemplation, it has left us only the ashes of the soul. If this conflict between anguish and reason aesthetics concerns all the arts, in the field of painting and sculpture it concentrates on the very physicality of the human body. The architect can change his language as much as he wants, he can build human beehives rather than garden cities, but he will always have to build a house, something that is more or less functional to man in society. Not the painter and the sculptor, they enjoy the freedom to disorient the objective vision in any place and time and this freedom seems to be the only conquest of today, a terrible, often bitter conquest. Umberto Pettinicchio lives and works in the dimension of this conquest. His painting tells us neither about nature nor about men objectively understood.
- Raffaellino De Grada, Le Anatomie di Pettinicchio, 1975
- In protesta contro le false ingenuità di un’epoca che è tutto fuorchè ingenua, [[Umberto Pettinicchio] si pone in un contesto che rifiuta la soluzione estetica come unificante dei rapporti tra l’uomo e il mondo. Per il modo come Pettinicchio traduce nel segno le immagini che contraddicono la banale oggettività della visione e per l’intensità con cui rifiuta il facile accostamento cromatico, pacificatore estetico della tensione dei contenuti, l’artista ci immette in un’immediatezza di comunicazione che lo fa distinguere tra tutta la serie di pittori che formalmente gli si apparentano ma che restano in una vaghezza dalla quale il Pettinicchio è decisamente alieno. Immediatezza ma non facilità di comunicazione. Se non si è capaci di intendere la suggestione che ci viene da queste dense opere di Pettinicchio, così diverse da tutta la pittura che cala a noi dall’Ottocento, la comunicazione non è facile [...] . Esiste tutto un settore dell’arte moderna che, per non essere facilmente comprensibile, trasporta il critico nella concettosità di un linguaggio che diventa ancor meno comprensibile della pittura stessa oppure lo costringe all’analisi puramente formalista. Si tratta invece di capire, aldilà del verisimile delle forme, qual è il contenuto interno che le anima.
- In protest against the false ingenuity of an era that is anything but naive, [[Umberto Pettinicchio] places himself in a context that rejects the aesthetic solution as a unifier of the relationship between man and the world. For the way Pettinicchio translates images that contradict the banal objectivity of vision into signs and for the intensity with which he rejects the easy chromatic combination, aesthetic pacifier of the tension of the contents, the artist introduces us to an immediacy of communication that makes us distinguish between the whole series of painters who are formally related to him but who remain in a vagueness from which Pettinicchio is decidedly alien. Immediacy but not ease of communication. If one is not able to understand the suggestion that comes to us from these dense works by Pettinicchio, so different from all the painting that comes down to us from the 19th century, communication is not easy [...] . There is a whole sector of modern art which, in order not to be easily understandable, transports the critic into the conceptuality of a language which becomes even less understandable than painting itself or forces him to a purely formalist analysis. Instead, it is a question of understanding, beyond the verisimilitude of the forms, what is the internal content that animates them.
- Raffaellino De Grada, Le Anatomie di Pettinicchio, 1975
- In protest against the false ingenuity of an era that is anything but naive, [[Umberto Pettinicchio] places himself in a context that rejects the aesthetic solution as a unifier of the relationship between man and the world. For the way Pettinicchio translates images that contradict the banal objectivity of vision into signs and for the intensity with which he rejects the easy chromatic combination, aesthetic pacifier of the tension of the contents, the artist introduces us to an immediacy of communication that makes us distinguish between the whole series of painters who are formally related to him but who remain in a vagueness from which Pettinicchio is decidedly alien. Immediacy but not ease of communication. If one is not able to understand the suggestion that comes to us from these dense works by Pettinicchio, so different from all the painting that comes down to us from the 19th century, communication is not easy [...] . There is a whole sector of modern art which, in order not to be easily understandable, transports the critic into the conceptuality of a language which becomes even less understandable than painting itself or forces him to a purely formalist analysis. Instead, it is a question of understanding, beyond the verisimilitude of the forms, what is the internal content that animates them.
- L’operazione culturale mossa da Pettinicchio è sulla figura umana, la medesima che i dadaisti compiono sull’oggetto: distorcendo l’oggetto d’uso in un museo, l’oggetto perde le sue caratteristiche abituali e si carica di significato diverso da quello che gli conosciamo, per cui è razionalmente noto. Così è per il corpo umano in Pettinicchio: mescolando i suoi arti anatomici (per esempio le ossa dello scheletro rimpolpato da lacerti di carne) con parte della fisicità esterna del soggetto umano Umberto Pettinicchio offre alla nostra fruizione un personaggio complesso e ambiguo, l’esterno-interno di una figura, qualcosa che prende un significato diverso da ciò che noi siamo portati normalmente a dargli. Per la via diritta Umberto Pettinicchio ha abbreviato tutto il lavoro che la psicologia della rappresentazione opera attraverso continue e non sempre sicure mediazioni. In modo più o meno riconoscibile, le opere di Umberto Pettinicchio ci danno questo suggerimento dell’interno-esterno della figura umana con l’animus che dicevo in principio e con il procedimento poetico ora descritto. Siamo agli antipodi dell’oggettività ottocentesca e delle istanze figurative del nostro tempo.
- The cultural operation moved by Pettinicchio is on the human figure, the same one that the Dadaists perform on the object: by distorting the everyday object in a museum, the object loses its usual characteristics and takes on a different meaning from the one it we know them, so it is rationally known. This is the case for the human body in Pettinicchio: mixing his anatomical limbs (for example the bones of the skeleton fleshed out with scraps of flesh) with part of the external physicality of the human subject Umberto Pettinicchio offers us a complex and ambiguous character , the exterior-interior of a figure, something that takes on a different meaning from what we are normally led to give it. By the straight way Umberto Pettinicchio has abbreviated all the work that the psychology of representation carries out through continuous and not always sure mediations. In a more or less recognizable way, the works of Umberto Pettinicchio give us this suggestion of the inside-outside of the human figure with the animus that I mentioned at the beginning and with the poetic procedure just described. We are at the antipodes of nineteenth-century objectivity and the figurative demands of our time.
- Raffaellino De Grada, Le Anatomie di Pettinicchio, 1975
- The cultural operation moved by Pettinicchio is on the human figure, the same one that the Dadaists perform on the object: by distorting the everyday object in a museum, the object loses its usual characteristics and takes on a different meaning from the one it we know them, so it is rationally known. This is the case for the human body in Pettinicchio: mixing his anatomical limbs (for example the bones of the skeleton fleshed out with scraps of flesh) with part of the external physicality of the human subject Umberto Pettinicchio offers us a complex and ambiguous character , the exterior-interior of a figure, something that takes on a different meaning from what we are normally led to give it. By the straight way Umberto Pettinicchio has abbreviated all the work that the psychology of representation carries out through continuous and not always sure mediations. In a more or less recognizable way, the works of Umberto Pettinicchio give us this suggestion of the inside-outside of the human figure with the animus that I mentioned at the beginning and with the poetic procedure just described. We are at the antipodes of nineteenth-century objectivity and the figurative demands of our time.
- Ma allora perchè Umberto Pettinicchio, date per certe le sue qualità eccellenti di pittore, può interessarci? L’artista sincero oggi non lotta soltanto per nuovi contenuti della storia umana ma anche contro la mistificazione dei vecchi contenuti, prima di tutto di quelli antropomorfici. Qualcosa di simile è avvenuto per la storia civile: oggi non basta più lottare come una volta per l’indipendenza di una nazione, si lotta per l’affrancamento di una classe – e insieme per quella di tutta l’umanità – dall’ingiustizia e dal dolore che sembrava una inevitabile, eterna condanna. Quando ci si avvicina oggi alla figura umana si avverte qualcosa che sta intorno all’immagine e che ci nasconde l’oggettiva presenza dell’immagine stessa. E’ questo qualcosa che hanno ben sentito maestri indubbi della figurazione umana, Alberto Giacometti per esempio o, per parlare di non figurativi più vicini a Umberto Pettinicchio, Bepi Romagnoni. I ‘grandi principi’, quelli ai quali noi crediamo, sono una mescolanza di santità e di menzogna. [...] Non si fidano dei grandi principi della figurazione, in questa ‘novelle vague’ del romanticismo. Cercano di seguire dall’interno la meccanica dell’operazione estetica, che una volta ( più di tutto dal classicismo) veniva coperta come in un buon ristorante si copre accuratamente la cucina.
- But then why Umberto Pettinicchio, given his excellent qualities as a painter, can interest us? The sincere artist today fights not only for new contents of human history but also against the mystification of old contents, above all the anthropomorphic ones. Something similar happened in civil history: today it is no longer enough to fight for the independence of a nation as it once did, we fight for the liberation of a class - and together with that of all humanity - from injustice and from the pain that seemed an inevitable, eternal condemnation. When we approach the human figure today, we perceive something that surrounds the image and that hides from us the objective presence of the image itself. This is something that undoubted masters of human figuration have well felt, Alberto Giacometti for example or, to speak of non-figuratives closer to Umberto Pettinicchio, Bepi Romagnoni. The 'great principles', the ones we believe in, are a mixture of holiness and falsehood. [...] They don't trust the great principles of figuration, in this 'vague novella' of romanticism. They try to follow from the inside the mechanics of the aesthetic operation, which once (most of all by classicism) was covered up as in a good restaurant the kitchen is carefully covered.
- Raffaellino De Grada, Le Anatomie di Pettinicchio, 1975
- But then why Umberto Pettinicchio, given his excellent qualities as a painter, can interest us? The sincere artist today fights not only for new contents of human history but also against the mystification of old contents, above all the anthropomorphic ones. Something similar happened in civil history: today it is no longer enough to fight for the independence of a nation as it once did, we fight for the liberation of a class - and together with that of all humanity - from injustice and from the pain that seemed an inevitable, eternal condemnation. When we approach the human figure today, we perceive something that surrounds the image and that hides from us the objective presence of the image itself. This is something that undoubted masters of human figuration have well felt, Alberto Giacometti for example or, to speak of non-figuratives closer to Umberto Pettinicchio, Bepi Romagnoni. The 'great principles', the ones we believe in, are a mixture of holiness and falsehood. [...] They don't trust the great principles of figuration, in this 'vague novella' of romanticism. They try to follow from the inside the mechanics of the aesthetic operation, which once (most of all by classicism) was covered up as in a good restaurant the kitchen is carefully covered.
- (Nella pittura di Umberto Pettinicchio) Per assurdo, la indecifrabilità figurativa corrisponde alla volontà di analisi della meccanica della figurazione, ricostruire l’analisi del reale si presenta come un fatto di irrealtà. E’ come nella vita, se si ricostruisce il procedimento per cui un fatto è avvenuto, sembra di toccare l’incredibile e l’impossibile. Come ciò ha potuto avvenire?! Vale per un delitto, l’eccezione, come per la banalità, una giornata normale. La ‘relazione’ tra noi e la realtà si condensa di una tensione inusitata; lo sventramento della figura e dell’ambiente, come si vede in Pettinicchio, corrisponde a una particolare psicosi della visione, tanto più intensa quanto più ben dipinta, con impasti felici e con strutture articolate che ci possono ricordare il Morlotti dell’immediato dopoguerra ma che, nell’atmosfera di oggi, si caricano di significati rivelatori e densi di una inedita drammaticità.
- (In the painting of Umberto Pettinicchio) Absurdly, the figurative indecipherability corresponds to the desire to analyze the mechanics of the figuration, reconstructing the analysis of reality presents itself as a fact of unreality. It's like in life, if you reconstruct the process by which an event occurred, you seem to touch the incredible and the impossible. How could this happen?! For a crime, the exception is valid, as for banality, a normal day. The 'relationship' between us and reality is condensed with an unusual tension; the gutting of the figure and the environment, as seen in Pettinicchio, corresponds to a particular psychosis of vision, all the more intense the more well painted, with happy mixtures and with articulated structures that can remind us of Morlotti of the immediate post-war period but which , in today's atmosphere, are charged with revealing meanings full of unprecedented drama.
- Raffaellino De Grada, Le Anatomie di Pettinicchio, 1975
- (In the painting of Umberto Pettinicchio) Absurdly, the figurative indecipherability corresponds to the desire to analyze the mechanics of the figuration, reconstructing the analysis of reality presents itself as a fact of unreality. It's like in life, if you reconstruct the process by which an event occurred, you seem to touch the incredible and the impossible. How could this happen?! For a crime, the exception is valid, as for banality, a normal day. The 'relationship' between us and reality is condensed with an unusual tension; the gutting of the figure and the environment, as seen in Pettinicchio, corresponds to a particular psychosis of vision, all the more intense the more well painted, with happy mixtures and with articulated structures that can remind us of Morlotti of the immediate post-war period but which , in today's atmosphere, are charged with revealing meanings full of unprecedented drama.
External links edit
- Encyclopedic article on Raffaele De Grada on Italian Wikipedia