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«He felt in a genuine and direct
way the urgency of recovering our "urgent naturalness" in this world that
concluded in a distorting way the path of one of the most complete and prestigious human
cultures».
The long path of Arts begins from the immediate and from the symbol. Even before being a
collector of images, the progenitor was a collector of magic words wbich his fear and his
inadequateness fed with signs and amulets.
In this way primitivism brings us back to those far-off origins of human Civilization,
that are still present in the magic child, when, at the age of three or four, he prepares
to experimerit the many developmental possibilities for his insertion in the culture of
his age.
Here is Roberto Cassella, painter and sculptor who witnesses these origins and the
survival of a magic child in each of us even when we are adults. He carried out his path
that has led him from figurative experiences to symbolic experiences (after all, wouldn't
it be better to call the whole so-called "abstract arts" in this way?). He felt
in a genuine and direct way the urgency of recovering our "urgent naturalness"
in this world that concluded in a distorting way the path of one of the most complete and
prestigious human cultures.
That is something more.. it is the explanation of a deeper reality with respect to candid
painting, superficially called "naif' by ordinary divulgers of mass culture.
But the many currents of naif painters have never completely experimented this charming
wealth of the magic primitive. Roberto
Cassella is now approaching it, even if with the relationships which are always traceable
for any artist. He is authenticaly spontaneous; he feels in a genuine way; he is effective
in a genuine way; and the "traditional great arts"... are just a headache.
I mentioned possible relationships. Yes, I would find some relationships, because his
works remind me of the great naif artists of the good Yugoslav time, before Serbian
criminals took their lives, their dreams, their values (of art, of civic duty, of humanity
and of everything wbich makes the human being civil) in their present-day massacres that
barbarously have belonged to them for centuries. I am referring to Jozef Keimbo, shepherd
and little peasant who draws on stylistic elements of Bogomili, - and even more - of
Bogosav Zivkovic', collector of animal-vegetable intimacies in his speaking totems, and of
the following Milan Stanislavljevic', dynamic, religious, intense: or - in a different
ethnical field - the beautiful enigmatical figures of the miner Erich Boedeker.
With this last German sculptor we have enlarged our view. I can also mention the Haitian
Georges Liautaud, the Nigerian Asiru Olatunde, and then the Dalmatian Petar Smajic' or -
even more similar to Cassella - the Hungarian Szegeni Gabor, or the Polish Jedrsej Wawro,
Leon Kudhla, Stanislaw Zagajewski, not to forget the astonishing Zygmund Skretowicz.
It is easy to realize (and that's why I took the liberty of giving a small list of nouns)
that Roberto Cassella, with this art which is so sincere and therefore so complete, is not
a sole voice, he is a soloist in the chorus of the outstanding, large, alwajs astonishing
and often wery delightful candid sculpture.
We could say more, we could say that the primitivism is also the
starting point of the many Mediterranean confluences. We could say that close to Orneore
Metelli, Ligabue, Corrado Spaziani, great masters of the candid Italian painting, it is
not always easy to put a candid sculpture of so much importance. Welcome is therefore this
sculptor. The rest, as I said before is just a headache.
Gabriele Mandel
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