Giuseppe
Marchiori
Ideas on
time
Very often it is believed that present time
is in complete antithesis to a not too distant past. Research
into painting therefore assumes different aspects; it rebels
against the laws, forms, and values of a present that seems
to have resolved the problems of the moment and to have
resolved them in a rapid course of events.
Today, either an artist is disposed to follow certain, apparently
new, paths or is ready to challenge the present which often
- all too quickly - becomes the past. Salvation therefore
consistsa in a rational search for a visible quid that is
fascinating because of its overwhelming mobility.
In a situation such as this, a young artist like Luciana
Cicogna turns to an inner world without feeling herself
too estranged from her own time, endeavouring to discover
a true, spiritual dimension within it. This is the only
way to avoid becoming lost in the chaos or being too drawn
by external curiosity. And the right reaction occurred following
a precise method, without being misled by outward appearances
of striking but too easy and too ingenuous research. Luciana
has instead imposed a reflexive simplicity - very difficult
to realize at a time such as ours when we - too often -
try the paths of an exterior experimentation materially
destined to corrupt and to come to nothing.
Sheltering in her own interiority is not - for Luciana -
flight: it is, on the contrary, a strict conquest that ideally
draws her closer to the austere moral figure of another
Venetian lady painter, Bice Lazzari, who believed strictly
in an authentic intellectual discipline, in the value of
a search for style, without even the slightest concession
to the somewhat easy aspects of modernity. Luciana has managed
to achieve images of extreme purity, of a lyric character
that is stated through a colouristic musicality of subtle
tones, of mysterious humility, of intimate harmony.
I think these paintings could be metaphorically defined
as “the silence of things” precisely in a period
in which there is a plethora of noisy and presumptuous things.
I do not know if what I have written above explains such
very genteel and reserved art. But this is the impression
gained when considering a composition of this rigorous simplicity
and refined colouristic taste. These are still-lifes that
fit into the ambience of a precise structural dimension,
but always within the bounds of fantastic, limpid grace.
Perhaps Luciana’s art could be defined like this:
recollected, placed in time, and severe in its contemplative
concentration.
1980
translated
by Patrick Knipe
