|
[le opere]
Tribute to Giuseppe Castrovilli
 One
of the dangers for an artist is that of falling into a routine, a real threat
when, feeling confident in one's own means, an issue is faced with the same
spirit. He or she might manage to keep up the standard, but the inspiration
that gives a work of art the characteristics that make it a revelation are
lacking.
Giuseppe Castrovilli has no need to watch
out for such a danger. He has the good fortune to dedicate not all of his
time to painting - even if he did make a successful start when he was just a
boy - so he stands before his canvas and his colours with a repressed charge
that highlights his perceptive and interpretative skills, leading him to
paint with a passion that is clear in each and every one of his works.
Castrovilli is by his own nature oriented
towards perceiving objects in an intimate, personal way; on observing a
landscape from his sentimental standpoint, we would be led to say that he is
suggested the way to giving us its images not as we would see them by
ourselves, but as he sees them: somewhat in his image, or at least with the
sign of his spiritual interpretative personality.
These characters hinge on a dominant note
that the artists chooses, extracting it from the atmosphere of the ambient or
from certain essential elements that manage to refine it, with an
orchestration of slightly mysterious variations and additions, due in part to
his special preparation of background and his rapid spreading by spatula, in
light overlays: authentic striping veils, veined by the skilful handling of
tool.
There's a series of paintings inspired by
the sea and the Ravenna Canal, with its fisherman's huts, the interplay of
antennas, the large hanging nets that emerge, as if suspended, from a pearly
atmosphere that changes hue: appearances in which solid material undergoes
unreal types of metamorphoses. In his pictures of old Milan, the images of
the Darsena1 emerge from a smoky ambience that changes under a
pale sun, that leaves hanging threads of silk, and the old derelict homes or
the abandoned farmhouses in some corner of the city outskirts wear, just like
a glorious old uniform, their ragged coats of crumbling brick, but rich in
blood made dark by the damp, spotted by lichen. In the views of Burano, where
the artist spent time developing his skills and technique, we are not
impressed so much by the groups of typical houses standing staunchly like
monuments, whose Pompeii reds and enamelled ochre are sung in the sun, as by
the boats that the artist's frankness lets rock gently on the murky water or
docked at the external point of the canal.
We are always given a wide view, an
overall solution, even when the details take on their own value: a
non-objective interpretation of content, in which, as we have said, the
artist's emotive contribution ends up dominating, without ever being subject
to the servitude of a scheme.
This can also be seen in his drawings,
where the stroke never manages to impose its presence, to give the image an
exclusively graphic flavour. The structures, that do not require stark
contrasts or dark shadows to become solid, are veiled by a gradual
chiaroscuro with a subtle chromatic tension.
Castrovilli, as we can see, makes the
landscape his own, though with absolute respect for the personality of its
components; he interprets it according to his own feelings - maybe even
obeying the dictates of certain ideas or moods, but never allowing their
influence to be violent. It is virtually impossible to discern which might be
his own variations (maybe, or indeed certainly made unconsciously) to
objective reality.
All we feel is that reality is charged
with a charm of which we were previously unaware, and that few others manage
to highlight with such spontaneous and seductive perception.
Dino Villani
[back]
|