A short biography, from story and interview
By Antonello Rubini
Sandro Visca is certainly one of the most interesting Italian contemporary artists that works with the theme of the imaginary. He was born in L’Aquila September 19 1944, where he spent his childhood in a house in the outskirts of the medieval city amongst gardens and the smell of musk. At an early age he already showed signs of having a high sensitivity
[“It is here that for the first time I had the possibility to discover that the architecture of a flower and a kite existed, apart from its esthetical aspect it could only fly behind a careful design.
Overall it was the direct contact with nature together with on hand experience and games from childhood that I started to notice the need to express all that I had inside of me that gave me emotion. Following this was an instinctive secret that had always accompanied me towards forms, colours, signs, materials and construction”].
Visca’s sensitivity revealed a true real love for art in the immediate years to follow
[“In 1950, during the post-war years, I was attending the second year of primary school and was already showing a lot of dedication to designing creative drawings with profiles evident of prospective. This gave my teacher, who loved painting and who would never hold her breath to encourage me, a lot of enthusiasm to do better. Once she took us to see the exhibition of Teofilo Patini (1840-1906) held at the town theatre of L’Aquila, right in front of our school “De Amicis”. I remember that I was impressed by those works of art that were based on themes inspired by the lives of the farmers of Abruzzo ( I only realised as an adult the excessive rhetorical declamatory to which they came from). So I was still a child and those paintings which were so large and of which I had heard my family speak about, seemed to be even bigger to me than they really were. I would be left in awe in front of those paintings that when we were called to return to school, distracted and taken by the emotion, I would remain speechless admiring those works of art, basically to understand how they were actually painted. Only when I found myself immersed in total silence did I realise that I had been left there alone. Going back I got involved in the intricate spaces of the theatre and with a lot of fatigue I was able to return to school even though quite late. I was seriously punished for this”].
In 1951, at the age of seven, he received recognition by winning a regional competition
organized by the school that he was attending
[“During these years I was chosen for my graphic capabilities to participate in a drawing competition. A serious competition where one was not able to copy from other books and there were sheets that were stamped by the commission. It was even prohibited to speak with the participants sitting next to you. This was the opportunity to win my first prize with a drawing entitled L’Usignolo. This success was a great start which encouraged me to believe in my capabilities”].
At the same time with what he produced in relation to his scholastic studies, Visca then completed his first paintings autonomously as a self-taught artist
[“I was given his first box of oil paints as a birthday gift, after insisting a great deal at the age of eight . Not knowing how to dilute them, I carefully thought of using the olive oil that my mother used in the kitchen as a solvent and the result was that the little small squares that I had painted, would never dry and consequently they could never be handled not even after many months due to the paint that always remained fresh”].
Finishing middle school he felt decisively directed toward a school specialized in art but met strong resistance from his family that is however overcome later.
[ “L’Aquila in those years was a deeply rooted provincial city and although it was the capital of the region it did not have an artistic school. Only in 1955 the Scuola Comunale d’Arte (Community School of Art) was instituted, but not legally recognized and therefore my parents did not give me permission to enrol, they wanted me to go to a state school. I tried to convince them to send me to Liceo Artistico di Pescara (Artistic High School of Pescara), but I did not succeed. I was therefore enrolled against my will in the Istituto Tecnico per Geometrie (Technical Institute for Geometry) where there was, yes, a bit of drawing but all technical drawing. Fortunately after two years, the Scuola Comunale d’Arte (City School of Art) was transformed into a state school and I was able to change my direction of study”].
Obviously knowing his capabilities he was enthusiastic to attend a school like that.
[ The Scuola d’Arte opened a door for me to begin and live my first experiences in relationship with the world that interested me and that especially illuminated me on the various aspects of the technology of representation. The possibility to apply my ideas in a wide radius, was by now a realized dream. In the course of my studies, especially in my professional subjects, I always participated with vivaciousness and total dedication always being curious of everything. Of course painting remained a private event because at school it was not taught and therefore, for the thing that I cared about most I had to go ahead with my own steps counting only on my own energy,, furthermore I was forced to face the reality that L’Aquila was rather lifeless ].
In September of 1961, right before attending the art school Visca had his first personal art exhibition at the Eden Hall in L’Aquila, exhibiting twelve works of art.
[ “It was an emotional adventure. At that time I painted figurative paintings carried out however with alternative materials of common use. I blended niter-synthetic mixed enamels to putty for wood, that I then worked with a spatula and glued mixed strips and pieces making up a figuration mostly made up of material. My intent since I was sixteen has always been to find a personal way of painting similar to speaking and my own private path to follow”].
That exhibition substantially represented his official debut
[“It was reviewed by a regional paper provoking curiosity and flattering appreciation. I remember as well those of Fulvio Muzi, the most well known artist of the city, that during the exhibit declared that he had to keep in mind the promising quality of a guy so young. His appreciation, and especially his advice were a great help to me”].
Thanks to this occasion I made the acquaintance of the Ciarletta brothers
[ “They were well known people who were part of the history of the city. They lived between Rome and L’Aquila and during the Winter months I often found myself spending entire afternoons with them at the Sala Eden. Despite the fact that I was only seventeen they considered me almost as equals, and this despite making me feel a bit embarrassed gave me a lot of gratification. I always enjoyed listening to their tales, especially those of Nicola who was a professor at the University of Storia del Teatro (Theatre History) who liked to show his polyhedral knowledge, especially about the history of modern art. He also told me tales of his friends in Rome, often about Monachesi who during the vivacious Roman nights of the fifties turned himself upside down and Nicola would pretend to play him like a double bass. He also told me about Ennio Flaiano , a good friend of his and about Francescangelo for his prestigious activity as a costume maker, not to mention other stories about L’Aquila”].
but in the early years the most important figure for Visca was probably his uncle Niclo Allegri thanks to him he acquired different important acquaintances.
[“He was my mother’s brother who owned an industrial paint factory in Turin and in that period he was the most well-known Italian collector of the second futurist period. He was a very witty resourceful person who collected almost every work on the market by Prampolini, Fillia, Diulgheroff, Oriani and many others (I later met Oriani in a meeting in Rome). He secretly kept them in a villa in Torre Polluce where he would go on vacation. He was always very considerate with me, in fact in those years he sent me a little cheque each month to help support my painting expenses. One Summer he invited me to the villa in Torre Polluce so I had the possibility to see in person his artistic assets that only later, as I supposed , had been re-valued as it deserved. Often he organized exhibitions with those futurist paintings and once he brought me to Rome with him where I had a meeting Laura and Enrico Crispoli, Filiberto Menna and Ferdinando Bologna with which he had to arrange an exhibition at La Medusa Gallery in via del Babuino. To know these artistic experts was very important for me, as I was attending my second year at the art school, and I remember that I put myself under their assessment with shyness. When they saw some of my works that I had brought with me they were stunned that someone so young had made them, however they said that for my young age I had to wait a bit longer to see the improvements. I was a bit perplexed, but at that time things were like that, good or not, young people were viewed with wariness. Today it is the complete opposite”].
In 1962 at the Spanish Castle in L’Aquila the first cutting edge international exhibition was held, Altenative Attuali, that included a tribute to Alberto Burri, with whom we will see in later years that Visca was involved in a big undertaking. Naturally an event of that importance could do nothing less than to spur the young Visca on
[ “L’Aquila had always been a rather closed minded city and in the field of visual arts it never offered real working opportunities to anyone. The only exceptional happy moment that the city had was when Enrico Crispolti and Antonio Bandera organized the first edition of Alternative Attuali. Not only for me was it the occasion to open ones eyes to the world of international art. The Alternative Attuali issues were a big lesson that anticipated the Biennale in Venice that only later awarded the prize to American Pop Art”],
and spurred him also in terms of open-mindedness, of problems with the local reality always increasingly more evident, pushing him in 1966 to be one of the devisors of the nickname
“anti-biennale,” in which the catalogue maintains that he “intends to extend the concept of democracy also in the field of figurative art ” and therefore not being considered out of the running by the Biennale Regionale dell L’Aquila, causing Remo Brindisi to acquire two of his works for the Museum of Lido of Spina.
[“After the first issue of Alternative Attuali, I had a certain intolerance regarding the artistic situation of my city and I was one of the most active promoters of the protest of the management of the Regional Bienniale of L’Aquila, that from then on declined. In that period along with a troop of fellow painters and local intellectuals I tried to form an artistic group from L’Aquila (Gruppo Artisti L’Aquilani), but because of the general near-sightedness ; for the incoherency and also for the barren problems that arose it all amounted to nothing. From there I began my disillusionment with the L’Aquilanian environment”].
1964 Visca took part in the founding of “Gruppo 5” (group 5)
[“In those years the presence of Giuseppe Desiato, my drawing teacher, was very important to me. He was a concrete artist, aggressive and was an essential reference for my work and despite me being his student he placed me in the just forming “Gruppo 5” that he had created, although there were controversies within the direction of the school. Desiato, Giuseppe Pappa, Ennio Di Vincenzo, Marcello Mariani and myself made up the group. The intent was to remove the immobilization and the near-sightedness of a lifeless city by proposing reformist works of art of strong expressive content”].
and that which Visca writes in the catalogue of the five, already demonstrates a very clear plan on the search of ideas: “ I love ‘the traces of ripped paper from the successive layers of paper’ because they leave ‘an underlying suggestion in space,’ and this suggestion is carried out only on the canvas and through the canvas .” In this period Visca worked hard on the carrying out of works often implicating materials of recovery, veined in dramatics.
[“For a generational fact I lived in the informal style a few years late but it then became useful to me to propose a sort of material figure. At the beginning of the sixties I felt the necessity to underline the beginnings of a shattering of reality that was slowly surfacing. During this period such themes as “Tragedie” and “Crocifissioni” were born to which I wanted to highlight the essential drama of man”].
Paintings of a certain size were alarming from a social reflective point of view
[“They were strongly material works carried out in a time that preceded the strong protest of the seventies and through this work the attempt to bring to light the system of the world that was always accelerating even more. In fact in those years an economy rise began which led to an economic boom. Certain aspects of that period were not very convincing to me because I began to see that the system that was evolving certainly did not correspond well with civilized living”];
with which he kept until November of that same year, in a second personal exhibition in the salon of Le Grand Hotel et du Parc in L’Aquila. The exhibition is presented in a catalogue from the young Emidio Di Carlo who wrote in an article in the paper Il Messaggero that “The painter moves from the push of the most burning issues that he hears in the news, that first he listens to and then draws on because it can be represented in a poetic manner close to the sensibility of the artist. ” After this Visca moves to Rome because in L’Aquila he was ostracized.
[“After awhile the problems of the anti-biennale subsided and perhaps to keep me in a good mood I was contacted to participate in an edition of Alternative Attuali. Crispolti came to see me in L’Aquila in my workshop in Via Tre Spighe to choose works to exhibit but after a few days he wrote me a letter in which he regretfully informed me that he would not be able to invite me for that edition due to the refusal by the organizers. Given the fact that I had already had past problems it was not a surprise to me but I still felt deeply betrayed by the city and I decided to close the chapter of L’Aquila in my life and go to live in Rome”],
Even in Rome, after awhile the city revealed itself to not be inclined to the promotion of those artists that chose to work without shame in full view
[“In those years in Rome one lived in a moment of extraordinary beauty, but it revealed itself to be a great bourgeoisie province where one would do anything at any cost to get what he wanted, one had to have been seen schmoozing in bourgeoisie circles. I never let down my guard, not for morality or for provincialism, because that type of transit was not my way of being”].
and because of this, after a few years Visca moved to Milan, where on the contrary of previous experience he soon got considerable results,
[“At first I began to visit Milan in alternative phases and in a short while many doors opened for me and I got interesting contacts. Well, I had the possibility to enter in the favourable environment of the artistic world. Soon, in fact I also had the possibility to sign a contract for three years with an exhibition gallery,”]
but just after a year he realised that the situation he was working in could be in terms of research, a two-edges sword, so revaluing Giuseppe Misticoni’s invitation (Visca met him during the prestigious exhibition Proposte Uno in Avezzano in 1967, where the artist was exhibiting) to teach at the Liceo Artistico (Arts Highschool) that he directed, he decided with courage to leave everything and move to Pescara.
[“After a year of much determination and without any hesitation I broke that contract which had given me economical security each month and when I had a moment of uncertainness about what to do with my life I remembered G. Misticoni offering me to teach in his Liceo Artistico in Pescara. Teaching never appeared in my life’s plans but in that moment I was focused to gain back my freedom and stay clear of critics and the way the business market worked, so I decided to move to Pescara and, even if I knew I could meet a hard reality, I left the centrality of the big cities. In Pescara the hospitality of Misticoni but also of Alfredo Del Greco, Elio Di Blasio and others comforted me a lot”].
It’s 1968.
[“1968: the political protest was at its height. The world shows severe lack. The western society demonstrated already at that time evident imbalance in the system’s setting and the kind of protest that was occurring didn’t have the sufficient strength anymore to subvert anything. According to me in that moment it wasn’t enough just to raise picket signs just to say no. They needed to suggest alternative plans opposing the system from the inside. We had reached the point where everything that doesn’t work was so evident that it denounced itself. Choices needed to be made and standing in front of that scene, even realizing that you cannot have a revolution with art. I firmly decided to distance myself from the power system and begin to fight it outside of what was fashionable at that time that had already begun to be used as a vehicle to support the art business. Also at school, while the fermentation process of the protest was growing, I was pushing in the opposite direction. In universities they were giving profusely political grades while instead I was applying teaching methods related to the “simulation game”, fighting firmly to improve my students individual skills but always respecting their intelligence and freedom of doing. I was convinced that to oppose this apparatus already so strong and crystallized the only possible weapon we had was improving our knowledge, being able to do whatever we had to do at the maximum capacity level to counterpoint well founded alternatives. Also for that reason, in my work, never losing myself in the maze of the art vogue, I always profused a complete dedication to find my own language ignoring what other artists’ choices were, so I worked the hardest to create an alphabet that was a mirror of my being.
In part I think that I succeeded and even know it’s not a great success but I find my ethical purpose with which I began my adventure as an artist positive from my side. I mainly think that the merit was to walk that path with humility and modesty aspiring always to understand a bit more than a moment before and always working just in the certainty of doubt and, most of all, being far away from the twinkling sparks of success. I have always been convinced that the role of the artist cannot be the virtuoso who is just looking for economic glory but should be one of an individual who concerns himself with world issues, through his own imagery and of the problems that concern the world”].
It’s 1968, as we said, and in Pescara Visca outlines a common line with his previous work and even if he repeated provocative fundamental principles and some stylistic features, arriving convincingly at a language of a magic dream-like impression which he still uses today, adding to it some territorial references
[“When I came back to live in Abruzzo I had lost every possibility to put myself in a decision-making position but I got to belong again to my land which is rich of complex historical-cultural stratification from which I could draw on for stimulation and motivation for my research. Pescara was for sure a very difficult choice because it took me far away from many desirable situations and from economical security but on the otherhand, as I was always saying you can commit suicide just from the ninth floor and not from 50 cm as the world tries to make us believe. After a flight from the ninth floor you are sure you are going to die but after 50 cm in the worst case scenario you can just find yourself hobbling for the rest of your life. I always found it sad, that concept was never mine”].
One of the first people I met in Pescara was Antonio Bandera who, as we saw, was one of the curators of Alternative attuali
[“By now for some time, after a period of official militancy in art, Bandera was involved just in journalist activity in the cultural third program of RAI. He lived in Rome and every Summer he came back to Pescara for some months on holiday. During these periods we would spend a lot of time together and usually in the evenings we would go to a Lido at the seaside together with our friend Alfredo Del Greco (a notable artist of the 60’s) staying out all night until dawn to discuss art and world problems. He had a great consideration for my work and of Del Greco and despite the fact he was out of practice in the visual arts he was always available to give me attention and positive advice. He convinced me even more that the choice to leave the big cities for the country was the right thing to do. Often behind his loud laughs he would say that I was a true nut case, but that I had made the right decision at that time.”]
In 1969 the Teatro Stabile dell L’Aquila entrusted him (Visca) with a rather demanding assignment, the carrying out of the set design by Albert Burri for Ignazio Silone’s L’Avventura di un Povero Cristiano, directed by Valerio Zurlini.
[“I was contacted by T.S.A. because in Italy no set technician was available to carry out the making of the set. It was based on a two plastic scorch marks, one white and the other red and a large sack. I had to create three flats, each of a base of 10×7.5x metres in relationship with three little models made by Burri. I went to make the two scorch marks in Milan where the theatre had reserved for me a large area next to the pavilion of the fair. To keep job I had taken I was able to realize it by not sleeping for fifteen days in a row and working without stop both night and day. At that time I was 25 and everything was possible. Instead I went to L’Aquila to create the large sack near the town theatre. I met Burri in San Miniato because the Summer opening of the show was scheduled to be in a small square of the city. I remember there was a moment in which we had a certain tension caused by an insistent rain that didn’t permit us to mount the backdrops outdoors so we had to wait two days for the rain to stop. During that time Burri was interrogating me about how I was carrying out the work and about the materials I used. While I was explaining to him that the scorch marks were made in part with a burner and in part pictorially, he demonstrated with mimic that he was a little doubtful so he emphasized that instead of using nitro-synthetic paints, I should have used some other colours he used to work with. It wasn’t easy to make him understand my technical choices and the fact that those backgrounds would be seen from a distance of at least 20m. I must confess that I was a little nervous myself about the fact that I couldn’t see the vertical panels yet but underneath I was confident. Finally it stopped raining late in the evening and Zurlini asked me to mount the scenes. Burri, with his inseparable Nikon hanging off his neck, went to sit in the back row. Under the stage there was Zurlini with Giancarlo Giannini , Gianni Santuccio, Zafred the musician and the rest of the staff. Then I joined Burri and when they hoisted the red scorch mark on the background the entire square resounded with wild applause from everybody. Then Burri approached the stage and shielding himself from the light he said that they should applaude the executor and then together with Zurlini he congratulated me declaring his satisfaction.”]
Thanks to that experience a relationship outside a professional context was established where they met on many occasions and spoke of Visca’s work
[“The friendship with Burri started in San Miniato and as time went by, it grew more and more because of our common passion for hunting. The first time I was invited to spend a week with him in his home-studio, in Casenove di Mucignano in Umbria I got to know another Burri. He was different from the misanthropist person everybody talks about. He was very open with me and during the afternoon breaks, right after we came back from the long hunting excursions he started to tell me with passion about the period of his captivity in the Hereford camps in Texas, about his first paintings and difficulties he found in the concentration camp to find primary colours especially red. He also told me with a certain anger about all the struggles and the dedication he put into the search for his missing brother, about Don, in Russia but especially about painting, his friends Colla, Ballocco and Capogrossi with which he signed the Gruppo Origine’s manifesto and we also spoke about my work. There was the time of Pupazze (rag puppets) and I must say that he was quite shocked watching my huge rag sculptures set in the square. At last, after long well structured consideration about art, he concluded by telling me that the most important thing for an artist is to follow his own instinct ignoring all the rest.”]
Visca continued to collaborate with Teatro Stabile for several years with long permanencies in L’Aquila, getting in contact with many personalities who were, for different reasons, visiting the city in those years.
[“In that period you could easily find me with the Living Theatre Company of New York and with Stockhausen and Bruno Canino, with Carmelo Bene and Gino Marotta, Piera Degli Esposti, Vittorio Gasman, Andrea Cascella and Gigi Proietti. The city was living an unrepeatable period of pure cultural vivacity and it was the location for continuous excellent meetings thanks to the T.S.A., to the Concert Society of L’Aquila and to the Accademia di Belle Arti directed by Piero Sadun. One evening at the inauguration of one of my personal exhibitions at the Scalco delle tre Marie of Paolo Scipioni (1974) where we met together almost every evening, Carmelo Bene behind a bamboozling smile once said to me: <tonight I’m going to let you watch my show on the stage with me (!?)>. Despite a consummated friendship that bonded us I thought it was just one of his provocations but that very night I found myself on the stage with him immersed in the flats made by Nino Marotta in the flesh, Nostra Signora dei Turchi as if I was an actor. In those years in L’Aquila I thought I lived privileges extraordinarily unrepeatable. Pity that everything ended too soon.”]
[pag.8]
Le Pupazze belong to this period, curious three-dimensional figures of big dimensions covered with rags (since at this moment the sewing-machine became for him a very important tool) in which <you can find deep down, a certain laughing at reality muffled by the sadness of the real puppets, authentic lifeless golems or weakened shapes in a not so refrigerated wax museum.> (Benito Sablone) .
A sharply metaphoric speech that establishes a connection between the inner man with the outer man faced in the early 60’s on a largely two-dimensional level, alternating the mixture of various material with the exclusive use of painting.
For two years in 1971 Visca was the teacher of figural design for Andrea Pazienza with whom he kept a meaningful friendship until his tragic disappearance in 1988. In 2006 the publishing company Fandango published the book Andrea Pazienza Visca about Pazienza’s large production on Visca in which he himself declared: <Over time I always found myself the “victim” of his scathing caricatures and in the unravelling of the sarcastic stories that he invented about me. I must confess though that I always have been secretly gratified by it, also because the most part of the published drawings in this book were done during class or in my studio> . On a leaf on the cover of the same book is written: <the thick black moustache, the stoned look in the eyes and the flowing hair, victim more than the protagonist of these surrealist undertakings. Visca found himself spontaneously catapulted into the young Paz’s imagination. The scoffing comedy, the precocious maturity of his sign and experimental language make Visca one of the most important characters in the extraordinary universe of Andrea Pazienza.>
It is 1973 when Visca meets Gino Marotta. At that time he was passing most of his time in L’Aquila where he was teaching in the Academis di Belli Arti and he had been studying the deconsecrated church of San Filippo. They met each other thanks to some friends they had in common who made them get in contact with each other because both of them were invited to the Triennial of Milan. Visca was in the section entitled The habitat’s empty space curated by Eduardo Vittoria.
[“In that period Gino was carrying out Artificial Paradise for the Triennial’s garden while I was in Pescara working on building a multi-material structure with a base of 6m for the Italian pavilion. Outside in the garden with Marotta, De Chirico was building his Mysterious baths and I remember him seated right in the middle of his sculpture as if he was a sculpture himself. There was also Burri with Teatro continuo who quickly waved at me and then he ran away and also Hunderwasser which I met as an artist in an edition of Alternative attuali in L’Aquila and, Sebastian Matta with his Autopocalipse. In short the Triennial of Milan 1973 was one of the most interesting ever. When Marotta found out about my invitation he escorted me to move my piece from Pescara to L’Aquila to San Filippo’s church in order to send it later on to Milan together with his own works. Infact my structure was loaded together with Artificial Paradise on a big truck, together with elephants, giraffes, flamingos and crocodiles made of pink methacrylic so it looked like an imaginary Noah’s arc and faith’s irony, we left under a torrential storm. Since that moment on a true friendship was born that continued beyond a professional admiration for each other and that has survived even now beyond our artistic careers.”]
Infact Marotta often followed him on mountain excursions
[“Gino discovered the mountain with me and despite his fears he succeeded in keeping up with me wherever I went, on Corno Grande, peak of the Grand Sasso , in a difficult passage rather high up, in cross country skiing and also during difficult stays at the refuge of Forco Resuni in the National Park of Abruzzo. Ever since I was young I have regularly gone to the mountains because other than living the pleasure of the discovery of places that I came across, I was able to elude the commotion of daily life and immerge myself in the noise of silence. My relationship with the mountains helped me to become more introspective, to break down hidden fears and also to remove hidden uncertainties.”]
This was a great passion for which in 1975 Visca carries out his only performative work Un cuore rosso sul Grand Sasso
[“In 1970 while climbing up the tallest mountain peaks, the idea for Un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso lit up in my mind. A kinetic work that I thought up like an attempt to note a place almost to protect itself. The film was made in 1975 in 16mm for the promotion of the school of dramatic culture in L’Aquila and the technical collaboration of Teatro Stabile. I especially owe the fulfillment of this undertaking to a group of scapigliati (People belonging to an artistic movement based on a non-conformist attitude and refusal of classical traditions), that together with noted rock climbers from L’Aquila, succeeded in transporting the big red heart (4x2x1meters) across Campo Imperatore to then hoist it up between the rocky mountain walls of the Gran Sasso. The task was not easy, in fact in several instances it revealed itself to be rather risky and the various technical difficulties that were met during the trip was a great challenge for the technical operator Fausto Giaccone and the staff. The film was accomplished because of the organizational capacities of Federico Fiorenza (who today is the director of Teatro Stabile in L’Aquila) and especially because of the strong determination of the entire operative group that never gave up in the face of environmental adversity, and in some cases, risky situations. ”]
The intrinsic motivations were briefly explained by the artist to Rita Centofanti in an interview in 1986: “The script is founded on the recovery of the mysterious sense of the magic formula (that is something, more than a thing, that could give something else a result). I start from the alchemic element of the magic formula and from there I construct the action. In this case in relationship to a series of complex reflections on the territory. And it is there at that time that the ingredients, the red sashes, the slow and wearisome walk, the heart that rises, that remains three days and three nights exposed to the elements, the descent to the valley and the abandonment without ever looking back. In the end it is about an action without an apparent conclusion, and that does not propose a solution. The aim is to lay out an open mental framework (in this case with a kinetic effect) in front of that which one can elaborate, certainly behind my precise “design,” the mysterious content of the opera through a real thought and real analysis.
In 1974 Visca realizes his first sewn tapestry, with the intention of a greater exquisite poetry, operationally chosen, and from that moment it often resorts to his way of doing things and in the ten years to come he holds a personal exhibition of only tapestries in L’Aquila in 1986.
[“I made my first tapestry in 1974 and I exhibited in that same year in Pescara in a personal exhibit at the Laboratorio Comune d’Arte “Convergenze,” in which I was a part of, directed by Giuseppe D’Emilio. From that first experience I decided to dedicate myself also to that type of work in the span of ten years, given the laborious execution, I was able to complete about twenty tapestries of small and medium dimensions without ever displaying them. Gallo Cedrone’s publishing house, interested in this work, arranged to publish them in an elegant monograph called Cuciti, with text by Enrico Crispolti and Tito Spini and for the occasion an exhibit was promised to me at the Spanish fort in L’Aquila. ”]
Crispolti in his writing emphasizes, to avoid suspicion, that “They are in reality paintings made up of material, and certainly not decorative deductions. ” This topic greatly interests Visca, but of which he by now has a precise opinion
[“They are in reality true paintings of material, and certainly not decorative deductions” This problem often hits Visca but he has a precise opinion of his own about the matter.
[“I don’t believe that decorative aspects that sometimes people find, belong to my work. I understand that my exaggeration in details could seem decorative but if one pays close attention and evaluates the cross reference of materials that I use one can note that my intention, also in the evident manufactured kitsch encoding, is to inoculate sharpened points of sarcasm and mixed irony and in some cases the grimace’s metaphor and of laughable nastiness. The aim is to insert in my work something overly sweet and stupid just as certain sad aspects of life can be. In the end this is an operation that has the tendency to mutate everyday life where objects and situations that are filtered in manifested irony are suggested through metaphors in fetish and simulacrum signs. Certainly when the pictography of the materials that I use presents itself more forced than usual it is easy to mistake the intentions, but my “gymnastics” has always been tight to punctuate constantly on the fulcrum between illusion and the objective relief of things in relationship with the reality of the world. I’ve always been dealing with that problem since my first rag sculptures. I’ve always challenged myself to push onward further and further to see how far I could vault on the trapeze without a security web under my feet. In my work I could for sure choose a less risky path to walk down , to line up with what was in fashion, living better and with less struggles but I have to say that easy things never have satisfied me, not even when I was young and I was handling the hard rocky reality of the Gran Sasso.”]
1978 is a special year for Visca thanks to an expedition in South America that he arranged and that greatly enriched him
[“ Since I was a boy I had always had an instinctive attraction for South America and particularly for Peru. I can’t tell you why, maybe because I belong to the Latin culture, maybe it comes from the books I read or from many analogies with my country or just because I always fantasized about the Andes mountains. I always had the desire to visit that far away land until when, in 1978, gathering all my energy I decided to leave for an adventure in those territories so sought after. A year before leaving I tried to improve my knowledge about Peru and its profiles: social-economic, historical-political, ethnic-anthropological and environment. Then I planned the journey in technical details: , clothes, photographic material, maps for moving about and studying all the paths. It wasn’t easy to organize, also because I couldn’t find any support from anyone at the Peruvian consulate. Just the Italo-Latin-American Istitute of Rome saved me. Its president Carlos Fernandez Sessarego revealed himself to be a kind and affable man as typical Peruvian people are and he also appreciated my true interest in his country. He later gave me precious advice and military maps to photocopy that later I found really useful. For several months I often travelled through Peru with various and adventurous means of transportation: on rickety truck beds together with Peruvians, their animals and their merchandise, driving through back road carrettere beside creepy cliffs. On many occasions we found ourselves walking mountains of 4000m on foot or with aged and run down vehicles. The only comfortable means of transport was the train that from Cuzco Department, takes you to Puno on lake Titicaca crossing the Andes at the height of 5000m, the highest railways in the world. My experience in Peru was somewhat touching and it had a nice conclusion (also thanks to the collaboration of Giancarlo Papini from Livorno who was with me for the entire journey) after we had gone up to part of the Rio of Amazon from Iquitos into the Amazon Forest of Peru. A year later in that territory the movie director Werner Herzog made his masterpiece Fitzcarraldo. After I lived in the flesh the problems of this country, of campesinos and of the indios, and after I touched with my own hands the precarious social-economic condition of that territory I realised that Che Guevara was just a great poet instead of a great revolutionist, abandoned by Castro and the Bolivian PCI. Hoping to find political consensus and help for his armed revolution from people who were resigned to living in that circumstance in a rarified reality was hoping for too much. Travelling across Peru I realised for the first time how much our western culture was responsible for that tragic and shameful inequality between continents but also how much Che Guevara, in his gorilla war fare attempt unfortunately with results that tragically disregarded his prediction was right. That trip enforced more the opinion I already had in the 60’s that in practice the western society should have given up that road chosen to reflect on the social problems guaranteeing a respectable life to the people of the world. That adventure I experienced anchored my political position even more toward my work and, over all, my choices. I never thought that the world should stop because it has the right to go forward as it always has done but without avoiding to cancel our dignity. That could have happened if at the end of the Second World War we had an ethic moral to look behind and understand where to remove the real codes with which encode the mechanisms to refound a new platform for our existence. Following this other adventurous travels gave me the opportunity to understand how much serious responsibility we have towards the world like the journey to Venezuela where, for thousands of kilometers I crossed by jeep the Great Sabana from Canaima to Roraima until I reached Brazil or when I came to recognize nearly all of the oases of the Tunisian desert and other adventurous travels in distant lands. They helped me understand how many serious responsibilities we have in comparison to the world. I collected almost 4000 photographs from that trip to Peru which the ethno-anthropologist Victor Von Hagen (who had years of experience in South America behind him searching for the Incas.) whom he knew about through a common friend. He was a Hemingway-like character and he lived on lake Bracciano and when he was in front of my photographic material he proposed that I publish a book about it with him. I immediately accepted with enthusiasm but because of scarce technology of those years and of my absence due to my two year work commitments taken previously, Von Hagen passed away so the book that I had layed out with much care was never published.”]
In the 90’s and at the beginning of 2000 he worked with more of a marketing intent on objects, with frequent foray into sculpture also making scenic backgrounds. One of these is Il grande firmamento (“the great constellation”) exhibited in the Ex Gaslini in Pescara in 1995
[“Carlo Lizza, who was the President of the Ente M.P. at that time, assigned me to make a piece to be inserted inside the Summer manifestation program of Pescara, suggesting that I make something with disestablishing content. I already had in my notes some ideas for such a piece as that, so after some studies and adjustments, I accomplished the project for Il grande firmamento. A visit from Ruggero Pierantoni, with whom I had the possibility to evaluate my project choices and exchange opinions proved to be quite stimulating. The piece consisted of making a big scene setting on a base of 10m x 10m and 10m high preceded by an entrance in front of this room-like area with smaller dimension. Later we had to reduce the dimension of the piece for economic reasons. Our goal was to disorientate the visitors making them enter inside this huge black box totally darkened and through a series of devices, produce a sensorial disorientation that would make them look at the only visible thing: a starry sky. The sky in the dark was highlighted because the stars were painted with fluorescent paint and lighted with a dark light (Wood’s light). The sensation for those inside, trapped by the dark, was mainly of uncertainness. Leaving a lighted environment and emerging oneself in complete darkness and losing all perception of space and balance because of the inclined floor, the visitor was forced to look for orientation and a point of reference out of the necessity of not getting lost. In that situation the only reference was the sky. Inside the dark big room there was an extra suggestive element, the disarticulated music by Karlheins Stockhausen and by Krzysztof Penderecki which almost drew the lighted points in the sky. Set to all these elements our aim was to conduct the visitor through a series of unpredictable situations, to raise his glance up in the air and make him reflect about how precarious, uncertain and little the reality that we are living in is.”]
Between 1995 and 1996 he was busy carrying out 2 large anthologies in Camerino in the Palazzo Ducale and in L’Aquila in the Experimental Contemporary Art Museum; both of the catalogues are equipped with selected critical anthology. The one in Camerino is presented by the neuroscience and cognitive psychology scholar Ruggero Pierantoni who sharply notes “his paths, his maps, his graphic and plastic texts contain moments of discouragement, spontaneous sadness, atrocious and tiny details (<the tiny ignominies> by Borges) .”
More over as a true lover of cooking in 1999 Visca wrote a book about cuisine from Abruzzo with great success
[“As a passionate and enthusiastic amateur cook I decided to write a book about my regional kitchen, Abruzzo. L’arte di far cucina (The art of cooking) it was also just like spurring those cooks for consumers, sponsored by the market that just required diversification. I want to declare that my knowledge of this subject doesn’t want to elevate itself on a scientific level; I just want to take credit for the fact that what I did, I did with a true enthusiasm and genuine passion toward what, according to me, is not a very minor form of art and as well as all my friends for whom I have cooked for many times can agree with me on this. So I hope that my readers can take from this book the same pleasure I had in writing it, and as a painter illustrating it.”] (Visca)
From November 1998 to December 1999 he made a tapestry sewing all along 34m where, in a certain sense, he displayed all his imagination encoding the measuring of the tapestry by Bayeux
[“In itinere (Along the path) was a very singular work …for the fact that I have never used tthat much time and dedication, an operative span of one year, to accomplish this sewn work. The idea came from reading some ancient manuscripts of paths which had a real determining importance in Abruzzo for their social, cultural and economic articulation. From reading that I understood that the ancient wool paths began from a point but after territorial complicacies they ended in another point highlighting the fact that they were not just simple walks but deep cuts of life. Those ancient paths, containers of lived lives, have been emphasized until today by some still living characters that, despite their advanced age, pushed me to seriously meditate about a multitude of evident assonances with the narrowing of our reality. In fact, my tapestry In itinere starts from the mystery of a sky and then after the unwinding of 34m ends in the mystery of another sky. My goal was to demonstrate, through the narrow track crowded of events, how short, precarious and mysterious our little existence can be, even told in the 34m work of art.”]
In the last five years he worked on the theme of the teatrini (puppet theatre), mainly pieces of little dimensions which “were sometimes ironic and sarcastic and sometimes tragic and they constituted an experiment that shows that our actual landscape that we live in is already ruined for several aspects, and also from different profiles severely unstable and insecure.” (Visca) .
In the catalogue of my last personal exhibition in Ofena I affirmed that: “they are disquieting because behind the vibrating iconic and precious material you can find overbearingly precarious and turbulent: the architectural bodies collapse into the compositions, the chaos imposes itself and those easy and joyful deductions lose some of their lightness and the figures sometimes seem to be caught in the instant of their destruction. But in all of that there’s no dramatization. I think that Visca takes a position that he has never showed with such decisiveness in the past ”
This is the path that Visca has taken so far, now looking behind him, he confirms and develops his critical position to an extreme maturity especially in respect to the current art system
[“ In the 60’s after I made my choices and my definite position, there are few things that I regret. I paid a high price coming back to Abruzzo and leaving the market and its economy because I could only fulfill just 60 percent of my projects. That thorn will always hurt me because in an artist’s life the most important thing is to carry out his ideas. All that remains theory doesn’t really matter. However I must say that my inner and outer conflict always gave energy to my work and improved my conviction that the truth doesn’t exist but not searching for it would have been a big mistake. Today I can say with much serenity that after many years of passionate and dedicated activity I still sense the mental energy. I feel as if I were organizing the beginning of my path today. The role of an artist never was the one of a revolutionary because you can create revolutions just with weapons but it has to suggest a thought, an idea, a way to walk, a fracture. It seems to me that modern art since economy has become a measure for everything even politics (in the name of the institutions they hang or take down pictures, dismount and set up…), differently from the previous times in the past, unfortunately it has mostly lost it’s function as a filter for social problems and no longer gas a true role in propositions and disagreement. Today the legitimating systems of art are blatantly evident. To create a renowned artist you need three firm points. A critic who theorizes his point of view, a millionaire collector who is ready to buy art for an outrageous price and a museum director who puts an official stamp on it. If we have those three passages it’s possible to transform anything into an important thing and if you are connected to politics you can go even farther. Today the art system is founded on the visual disorientation. It comes from those repetitious and boring works that acclaim the right to come from the nihilist revolution by Duchamp and Dada that made sense at the time but don’t anymore. The neo-avant garde believe they have to shock. I think that there is no one or nothing to shock. Today I believe that the only astonishing icons that can shock us are those of international television that transmit war scenes represented by mangled bodies of men women and children burned without names. Art should be a bit more knowledgeable, that real art of the artists form the turn of the century, what a coincidence, they are still popular today. Today anything that suddenly becomes important after awhile becomes exiled into the forgotten to give space to new commercial finds. In the 60’s the art situation changed all over the world and there was recognition from American culture. It was a very important change but at the same time it brought consequences that we can notice in the 80’s and the 90’s until today. Art is just a consumer product more then art for arts sake. Just think about the history of American abstract expressionists like Pollock to Calder until Rothko who were the last to pass it on. Despite their high value on the market, they nearly all committed suicide. They were convinced of an idea of a more pure world and cleaner and of a different function of art. Unfortunately their strong resistance to homologation didn’t ever have an outcome. Today many artists who reached success and million dollar price listings, work for an ignorant public who is easily impressed. They are works without any content. The mass media flirts with those artists who know how to shock the audience and the collectors buy those works not because they want to have a piece of art with content but just because they want to speculate on it in the immediate and because its listed price go up really fast. Prestigious magazines make catalogues for the godfathers of art like they were racing horses and they are put into categories with numbers on their “chests with good grades” or “killed” like they were “lame” and never recuperated or substituted. Usually the committees who direct those classifications are made up by international advisors who base their judgment on the work’s economic success, on the evolution of the artist’s career and the economic prestige he has achieved. The majority of the artists who work today are aligned with the system far from an ideal and their goals are to be the protagonists and to have economic success. I think I belong to a marginalized minority that isn’t certainly projected in this optic cone because I am convinced that art should be freedom or nothing. In art my is that the quality is to look inside the work of an artist, not in the superficiality of success and of trends. When in 1968 I decided to abandon the power of the market mechanism I certainly did not think that today we would have arrived at this situation, but I understood for sure where the art business machine would have gone so I decided to full myself out from this oppressive yoke. The symptoms of what was about to happen , despite being 25 years old with a bit of success, I foresaw this with a certain insight and if I had to go back in time I old would surely walk down the same path. I want to say to my friends and to all those who misunderstood my isolation and my choices that nevertheless I am an optimist and I keep on hoping for the same things. In one word, I wish the world would realize that we are altogether on a starship that should sail away from that fake reality that brings us just a disgusting glossy advertisement of success. We need to create an inside world and choose to live without the bureaucracy power that only means oppression. The hope is to regain our creative capacity adapted to living in a modern reality closer to values and to the needs of our human measure”].