1951
As a child, Visca begins to show a marked interest in drawing and painting; by the age of five, he is already spending his days painting landscapes and sketching imaginary characters. At seven, with the work L’usignolo (pastel on Fabriano cardstock), he wins a regional themed drawing contest organized by the E. De Amicis school in L’Aquila and is selected to participate in the National Children’s Drawing Exhibition and Competition held in Brescia from September 14 to 28.

1958
After completing middle school, and at his family’s insistence—albeit reluctantly—he enrolls in the Technical Institute for Surveyors; however, his interest in the art world remains strong, and he devotes almost all his time to painting.

1961
An enterprising young man with a strong personality, Visca stages his first solo exhibition at the age of seventeen—running from September 1 to 20—at the Sala Eden in L’Aquila, a venue that served as a hub for the city’s intellectual exchange and social interaction. He exhibits works such as Barattoli (Jars), Strumenti musicali (Musical Instruments), Paesaggio (Landscape), Marina (Seascape), Campagna romana (Roman Countryside), Paese (Village), Pesca al trabocco (Trabocco Fishing), Fiori (Flowers), Autunno (Autumn), Chimica (Chemistry), and Cantiere (Construction Site).

During this period, he met Fulvio Muzi—the city’s most distinguished painter—and the brothers Nicola and Francescangelo Ciarletta, with whom he formed a deep friendship despite the age difference.

After reluctantly attending the Technical Institute for Surveyors for two years—and despite his parents’ disapproval—he decided to enroll in the Art School, which had just received state recognition that year. During his studies, he distinguished himself through his energetic commitment to technically and artistically revitalizing his vocational subjects, though he particularly excelled in drawing and in the metalwork and goldsmithing workshop. During those years, his figure drawing teacher, Giuseppe Desiato—who would later become one of Europe’s leading figures in body art—selected him, along with other artists from L’Aquila, to form the “Gruppo 5.”

Driven by a keen interest in painting, he traveled to Rome to visit the first solo exhibition of Rothko’s work held at the National Gallery of Modern Art. It was there that he first encountered Burri’s early “sacks” (sacchi); despite the heated controversy surrounding them at the time, they left a profound impression on him.

1962
– From April 1 to 30, Visca represented his school at the Third Student Art Exhibition (painting section) at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. He exhibited Villaggio (synthetic enamel on board). The exhibition was organized by the Giornale d’Italia.

– He participated in the First “Giuseppe Casciaro” National Exhibition at the Circolo Artistico Politecnico in Naples. He exhibited Nudo (varnish and enamel on paper) from April 18 to 24.

– Visca was invited to the “Mostra del disegno aquilano” (Exhibition of Drawing from L’Aquila) at the Sala Eden in L’Aquila. He exhibits “Nudo n. 1” (ink on paper) and “Composizione di figure” (ink on paper). The exhibition is organized by the Società Universitaria di Cultura of L’Aquila. May 27 – June 10.

– In June 1962, he is selected for the “Premio Recoaro Terme” National Drawing Biennale and exhibits “Figure n. 1” (ink and mixed media on Fabriano cardstock, 50×70 cm), “Figura n. 2” (ink and mixed media on Fabriano cardstock, 50×70 cm), and “Figura n. 3” (ink and mixed media on Fabriano cardstock, 50×70 cm) alongside artists V. Adami, F. Casorati, G. Capogrossi, F. Gentilini, E. Greco, P. Guccione, R. Guttuso, G. Morandi, E. Morlotti, B. Saetti, T. Zancanaro, E. Scanavino, and others.

– He is invited to the “Premio l’Unità” exhibition at the Circolo della Stampa (Press Club), Palazzo Pomponi, in Pescara. He exhibits “Nudo” and is awarded a prize. The exhibition catalogue features a text by Nerio Rosa.

He participates in the First Regional Exhibition of Figurative Arts at the Youth Social Centre in Avezzano. He exhibits “Nudo di ragazza” (mixed media on panel) and “Torso maschile” (mixed media on panel) and is awarded a prize.

For Visca, the year 1962 was of significant formative importance thanks to the First International Exhibition “Alternative attuali” (Current Alternatives)—a tribute to Burri—staged at the Forte Spagnolo in L’Aquila by Antonio Bandera and Enrico Crispolti, who would later become admirers of his work. This major exhibition, along with those that followed—featuring the most important national and international artists of the time—opened up new horizons for Visca beyond the confines of a provincial city like L’Aquila, enabling him to grasp the artistic reality of the era with greater clarity and insight. In the early 1960s, Visca was supported through the purchase of his works by his uncle, Niclo Allegri of Turin—one of the most important and renowned Italian collectors of the Second Futurist period. Through him, and during trips to Rome, Visca met Laura and Enrico Crispolti, Filiberto Menna, and Ferdinando Bologna; in their critical assessments of his work, they expressed high praise and offered valuable insights regarding his future.

1963
– Visca participates in the Fourth Student Art Exhibition (painting section) at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. He exhibits La fine dopo la morte (The End After Death; mixed media on paper, 100 × 136 cm). The exhibition is organized by the Giornale d’Italia in collaboration with the National Centre for Art Exhibitions in Italy and Abroad. February 16 – March 15.

– He participates in the First Small-Format Exhibition in Sulmona.

– He participates in the Fourth Regional Exhibition of Figurative Arts at the Forte Spagnolo in L’Aquila. Exhibits “Nudo” (Nude) and “Figura” (Figure). April 21 – May 23.

– In September, at the Verrocchio Gallery in Pescara, he and Gerardo Lizza win the L’Unità “Omaggio a Toto” first prize ex aequo for the work “Disastro sangue.”

– Participates in the exhibition “Sette pittori aquilani” (Seven Painters from L’Aquila) at the Sala Eden in L’Aquila. Exhibits Da un brivido di luce and Disastro sangue. September.

– Invited to the National Small-Format Exhibition in Campo di Giove. Exhibits Momento in corsa and Momento automobilistico. November 3, 1963 – January 8, 1964.

1964
Sandro Visca, energetically engaged in his artistic research, begins creating a series of works in 1964 using reclaimed paper materials, fabrics, rags, Vinavil (PVA glue), enamel paints, welded iron, and other elements.

– Participates in the exhibition “10 Pittori d’Abruzzo” (10 Painters from Abruzzo) at the Centro Artistico della Gioventù Italiana in Genoa. Exhibits Disastro sangue – Attraversando una strada bianca (mixed media on panel, 97×127 cm), Oltraggio, Momento N. 1, Momento N. 2, and Momento N. 3. March 14–25.

– Visca, together with Giuseppe Desiato, Ennio Di Vincenzo, Marcello Mariani, and Giuseppe Pappa, participates in the “Gruppo 5” exhibition at the Gran Derby exhibition space in San Benedetto del Tronto. Exhibits “Pensando,” “Momento 1964” (mixed media on paper, 50×70 cm), “Disastro C-45” (acrylics and enamels on paper, 139×88 cm), “Attraversando una strada” (mixed media on paper, 50×70 cm), and “Momento-paura” (mixed media on paper, 50×70 cm). May 20 – June 5.

– Invited to the “Abruzzo in cammino” exhibition in Pescara. Exhibits “Tutto il mondo” and “Da una finestra.” The catalogue features texts by Maurizio Calvesi and Nello Ponente. June 3–14.

– Invited to the Sulmona Arts Prize (Premio Sulmona delle Arti) at the Palazzo dell’Annunziata in Sulmona. Exhibits “Colpe di desideri” (mixed media, 100×90 cm). September. On November 1st, he opens his solo exhibition “Visca” at the Grand Hotel et du Parc in L’Aquila, featuring over forty works and provoking strong disapproval from the local public.

«Sandro Visca is a young artist who embraces a specific path—one woven from the quest for human values.
His pictorial style emerges unmistakably from 1961 onwards: his vision is Expressionist. The human figure is deliberately fragmented, broken down into its constituent elements; raw sensations erupt from vast patches of colour. These are, for the most part, reactions captured through relentless, gestural action, yet they are always anchored to a narrative theme—a situation, a human moment, or a tragic event. The source material comes from the media—particularly the press—and Visca preserves the original communicative impact; if anything, he re-examines the question that prompted—though did not explain—the disaster or tragedy. If reality has manifested itself through the black ink of a photograph printed on the glossy paper of a mass-market weekly, it is the photo clipping itself that plays a central role in the painting. Nothing else could render the issue more vibrant, more searing—and thus more accessible.
The choice of a photograph, then, serves as the basis for a subjective re-presentation of the event in the finished work. In a sense, the artist acts as a link between the original event and the human reactions it provokes. Tom Wesselmann operates in much the same way when he extracts elements from advertising signs and re-presents them.
His work with collage—born of a need for storytelling deeply rooted in reality—takes on a more pronouncedly material quality in early 1963, hinting at future avenues of exploration in a Neo-Dada vein. It is work that calls to mind Schwitters and the great Merz collages. Here, however, the material does not function as refuse—as it does in the Merz works—but rather signifies an inability to act in the face of stark reality.
Rags, nylon, and wood appear in these cycles—bodies of work centred on specific issues, ranging from car accidents and plane crashes to mining disasters. In the group dedicated to mining disasters—six massive cardboard panels featuring cut-out windows—the collage recounts the human tragedy in a choked, moment-by-moment narrative. It is the product of news arriving rapidly from every corner of the globe; it is the wave of human breath saturating the air, making it breathable only through the desperate cries of men who have fallen victim to their own society.
The lack of faith is palpable. The crisis affects society and contemporary man alike.
Visca realizes that the battle must be fought alongside humanity. This leads to the Crucifixion cycle. Each work becomes a synthesis of the preceding series: a moment that translates into the inner fragmentation and outer reconstruction of the culpable man. A new narrative and a new figurative reality emerge; the religious theme takes a back seat: the fourteen Stations of the Cross become fourteen human moments charged with pain, sensation, and chain reactions—a new human presence.
It remains an exploration conducted through collage; the colour is vivid—as intense as the issues themselves—dripping and spreading into stains. The line is clean and brilliant, tangibly etching a human story relived to the point of agony. Yet the figure (burnt, torn apart, crystallized) seems on the verge of dissolving: it reflects a taste for the material itself, a contemplation of its plasticity (perhaps a new questioning of reality?), and an exploration of the need for a new spatial component and composition.
Visca listens in silence, sensing a human pulse: it is his own presence communicating—a presence that springs from the work he himself has forged using the materials he chose.”

(Emidio Di Carlo, “Incontri Presenze” [Encounters and Presences]: 30 Years of Painting and Sculpture in L’Aquila, Edizioni c.c.3 m. – Text taken from the introduction to the catalogue for the solo exhibition “Sandro Visca” at the Grand Hotel et du Parc, L’Aquila, November 1–15, 1964).

After completing his studies—and partly due to a growing incompatibility with the environment in L’Aquila—Visca decided to leave his hometown and move to Rome, where he also worked as a graphic designer for an American company until 1967.

1965
– Visca participates in the Group Exhibition on the Resistance at the Circolo Culturale Aquilano in L’Aquila. He exhibits Momento (mixed media). The catalogue texts are by Ferdinando Bologna, Nicola Ciarletta, Enrico Crispolti, and Giorgio Di Genova. April 23 – May 10.

– Participates in the “Omaggio a Pirandello” (Homage to Pirandello) exhibition at the Tre Marie Cultural Centre in L’Aquila. Exhibits “Di momento in momento mutano le illusioni” (mixed media on canvas, 80×60 cm). The exhibition is held under the patronage of the Teatro Stabile dell’Aquila. May 3 – June 6.

– Invited to the National Contemporary Art Exhibition in San Benedetto del Tronto. Exhibits “Momento” (mixed media on panel, 108×141 cm). April 25 – June 15.

– Visca is invited to the Second Sulmona Arts Prize at the Palazzo dell’Annunziata in Sulmona. Exhibits “Momento X-65.”

1966
In recent years, the artistic situation in Abruzzo has steadily deteriorated, with artists in the region divided into two opposing camps.

This is due to the control that certain influential groups manage to exert over the institutions of individual cities. This state of affairs has prevented the renewal of creative forces that had been hoped for to foster a more democratic cultural development in the Abruzzo region. For these reasons, the “Realtà figurativa d’Abruzzo” (Figurative Reality of Abruzzo) exhibition was launched in opposition to the L’Aquila Biennale, and Visca, together with a group of artists, became one of its most energetic promoters.

– Participates in the “Realtà figurativa d’Abruzzo” exhibition at Palazzo Bonanni in L’Aquila. Exhibits “La sposa” (mixed media on canvas, 110×130 cm), “Pensiero di un personaggio innamorato” (acrylic and synthetic paints on canvas, 70×100 cm), “Norma” (mixed media on panel, 50×70 cm), and “Crocifissione” (acrylic and synthetic paints on canvas, 70×100 cm). September 17 – October 18.

During the “Realtà figurativa d’Abruzzo” exhibition, Remo Brindisi purchases Sandro Visca’s works—“La sposa” (mixed media on panel, 110×130 cm) and “Crocifissione” (acrylic and synthetic paints on canvas, 50×70 cm)—for the Museo Alternativo. “A. …Brindisi” in Lido di Spina, Ferrara. Subsequently, the graphic edition “Per un ligamento d’amore” (a wooden container with an original insert sewn onto the lid, holding three screen prints on satin-finish aluminum in a limited edition of 50; dimensions 60x60x6.5 cm) will also become part of the Museum’s collection.

– In October, he is invited to the Third Sulmona Arts Prize (Terzo Premio Sulmona delle Arti) at the Palazzo dell’Annunziata in Sulmona. He exhibits “Momento”.

1967
– On January 1st, Visca opens a solo exhibition at Palazzo Cappelli in L’Aquila.

He exhibits nearly one hundred small-format works, including drawings and mixed-media painted cardboard pieces.

The catalogue features texts by Sandro Visca and Emidio Di Carlo.

– Visca is invited to the exhibition “La nuova situazione dell’arte in Abruzzo” (The New Art Situation in Abruzzo) in Luco dei Marsi and Pescara. He exhibits “Pensiero di un personaggio innamorato” (acrylic and synthetic paints on canvas, 70×100 cm) and “Personaggio che pensa” (synthetic paints on canvas, 70×100 cm). The catalogue features texts by Giorgio Tempesti and Margherita Abruzzese. April/May.

– In August, he is invited to the exhibition “Proposte uno” at the Palazzo del Liceo in Avezzano. He exhibits “Donna in scatola” (painted wood structure, mixed media, and light; 50x7x80 cm) and “Regina in scatola” (painted wood structure, mixed media, and light; …50x7x80 cm). The catalogue features texts by Maurizio Calvesi, Giuseppe Gatt, Filiberto Menna, Achille Bonito Oliva, Margherita Abruzzese, Giorgio Tempesti, Cesare Vivaldi, Alberto Boatto, Marisa Volpi Orlandini, and Nicola Pagliaro.

– He is invited to the First “Città di Penne” Prize. He exhibits Regina con fiori and is awarded the purchase prize by the Pescara Provincial Tourist Board (E.P.T.). August 21–27.

– Visca is invited to the Exhibition of Contemporary Italian Painting – Homage to Spazapan – Aspects of Painting in Abruzzo at the Arte d’Oggi gallery in Pescara. He exhibits Donna in scatola (painted wood structure, mixed media, and light; 50x7x80 cm). October 7–27.

1968
In 1968, urged by the persistent pressure of Giuseppe Misticoni—who wanted him as a teacher at his Liceo Artistico (Art High School)—Visca decided, albeit with considerable hesitation, to leave Rome and his professional ties to Milan. He moved to Pescara, where he was appointed to the chair of Painting Disciplines within the Academy Section of the Liceo Artistico.

In Pescara—far removed from the power dynamics of art criticism and the art market—he found a working method suited to his need to exist outside the system’s conditioning frameworks; with great determination, he chose this seaside city as his home.

During this period, he met Antonio Bandera, who took a keen interest in his work. His frequent contact with Bandera—a critic and journalist for RAI’s third cultural channel—led Visca to consolidate his political stance regarding his art and, above all, to more carefully define the direction of his future projects. Their friendship remained strong and enduring until Bandera’s death in 1975.

– From April 7 to 11, he participated in the exhibition Variazioni pittoriche su un tema xerografico (Pictorial Variations on a Xerographic Theme) at the Grand Hotel and Park Hall in L’Aquila. The exhibition was curated by Mario Falli.

– He was invited to the 2nd Premio Città di Penne (City of Penne Prize). He exhibited Ragazza con fiori (Girl with Flowers) and was awarded the second prize overall. The exhibition was curated by Remo Brindisi and Aleardo Rubini. August 19 – September 8.

– That same year, he participated in the Premio Europa 68 exhibition in Milan.

– In December, he was invited to the Premio San Fedele (San Fedele Prize) for young Italian artists, held at the San Fedele Gallery in Milan. Exhibits “Personaggio” (synthetic and acrylic paints on canvas, 70×100 cm)

1969
Sandro Visca—an artist versatile across various fields of activity and research—was working as an artistic collaborator for the Teatro Stabile dell’Aquila. For the 24th Theatre Festival in San Miniato, he executed the set designs created by Alberto Burri for the play L’Avventura di un povero cristiano (The Adventure of a Poor Christian) by Ignazio Silone. The production was directed by Valerio Zurlini, with music by Mario Zafred, director of the Rome Opera.

This encounter with Burri blossomed into a genuine friendship; united by a shared passion for hunting, they spent long weeks together hunting in both Umbria and the mountains of Abruzzo.

Although Burri was a reserved man—possessing the reticence typical of the Umbrian people—he often invited Visca to Casenove, to his mountain home and studio nestled amidst centuries-old chestnut woods. In this large house, with its Franciscan-style furnishings, Visca spent many afternoons with Burri discussing painting and hunting techniques. Occasionally, Burri enlisted Visca’s help to apply base coats of paint to works-in-progress and to prepare Cellotex panels.

In 1978, Visca produced an interesting photographic series featuring Burri.

– Visca participated in the First “Città di Lanciano” National Painting and Graphic Art Exhibition, where he was awarded the cup presented by Senator V. Bellisario, Undersecretary for Public Education.

– Invited to the 3rd Città di Penne Prize at the San Domenico Cloister. Exhibits “La sposa” (mixed media on canvas, 80×100 cm). September 21 – October 15.

– Invited to the 6th Sulmona delle Arti Prize at the Palazzo dell’Annunziata in Sulmona. Exhibits “Personaggio”. December 14 – January 6, 1970.

– Participates in the “Colore d’Abruzzo” exhibition at the Town Hall of Calascio.

1970
This year marks the creation of his first fabric sculptures—sewn using textile and multi-purpose materials—which he exhibits for the first time from March 10 to 21 in a solo show at the Arte d’Oggi gallery in Pescara. The exhibition catalogue features a text by Nicola Ciarletta.

«For a start, I like it for its figurative inventiveness and the extreme clarity of its execution—a quality that enlivens the invention the more it conceals it, allowing it to emerge gradually to the lingering eye.
It is, in fact, a matter of variations on a given theme—I have photographs here on my desk of some variations on the theme of the Queen of Hearts—so the invention lies in the detail (a pupil takes the shape of a heart; the heart’s colour shifts from red to green, like a traffic light; the embroidery on a bodice arranges itself so that the garment ends up resembling the face of the person wearing it), and the detail, by necessity, seeks to be discovered. Thus, the clarity of execution becomes the essential path to a slow, stealthy discovery.
But there—I am already describing what interests me. That slow, stealthy discovery is simply the focusing of attention; and as attention focuses, the detail becomes more important than the whole.
That is precisely what one seeks in a variation on a theme. To borrow a famous phrase from Picasso, I would say that here, one finds things before even looking for them. Finding—now this detail, now that—what forms the shifting fabric of the metamorphosis: finding it without searching, simply through the persistence of the gaze.
Meanwhile, this Matisse-esque Queen of Hearts—who sometimes appears between the magnified blades of a cigar cutter, a sort of guillotine poised to sever her spool-shaped neck—is an object: she is a doll.» (No more of a caricature, after all, than certain women painted by Picasso: remember the one wearing a plate—complete with dishes—as a hat?)
As a modern artist, Visca knows that man today (and by “man”—needless to say—we mean woman too) is “reified”—that is, he has become interchangeable with the objects he uses. (Picasso was the first to depict this interchangeability between man and object—if I may be forgiven for harping on the point.) Yet Visca also knows that, in the past, a figurative artist was considered a maker of objects, and that it took a long time for him to come to be regarded—on a par with poets—as an imitator (and thus, upon reflection, an interpreter) of human action (which requires development and movement). It is, then, based on this dual awareness that Visca comes to conceive of painting—which is vision (and aspires to be a vision of human actions)—as theatre; for theatre is, and has always been, vision (as the very word implies), having set out from its origins to make human actions that have already taken place present and visible. Thus, at a certain point, the variations on the “Queen of Hearts” figure turn into actual cloth dolls; “staged” in various poses amidst an assortment of objects (advertising photos, furniture, and their own original images), they are photographed and displayed in sequence, one after another. The result can be a caricatural, hallucinatory effect reminiscent of Godard (the filmmaker closest to the origins of theatre).
No, I wouldn’t cite Bay as a model: Bay is mischievous, not theatrical. However, I would advise Visca to pay greater attention to the choice of furniture (especially the chairs), which—in my view—must be as authentic as possible and suited for everyday use, yet so authentic that they appear to be mysterious fictions; meanwhile, the female figures—weary like resting acrobats—grow through the hyperbolic intensification of their own reality.”

(Nicola Ciarletta, “What interests me in Visca’s work…”, introduction to the catalogue for the solo exhibition “Visca” at the Arte D’Oggi gallery in Pescara, March 10–21, 1970).

“One can no longer speak of painting without the term encompassing a wide array of values—ranging from the social and aesthetic to the strictly compositional and harmonic—all subject to change in order to better strike the emotional chord often linked to chance. Confronted with Sandro Visca’s painting, one’s mind is crowded with names and situations that—while not offering a direct comparison—suggest at least an analogy. A mark as elemental as those found in his sketches and paintings cannot help but be charged with experiences relived at the very limits of the most complex challenges. Nicola Ciarletta leaves out the name Baj, mentions Picasso—albeit in passing—and then returns to the subject. He likely overlooked Klee, yet he grasped Visca’s intent regarding his pupazze (effigies)—figures first presented on canvas, then physically constructed and placed in a space where, strangely enough, they seem overwhelmed by their own framed source images and tend to retreat back into them. It is as if the chairs, the table, the music stand—everything arranged for them—were rendered useless and superfluous, discarded from a discourse that had been ambitiously launched on two planes only to revert to a single dimension. Ultimately, it is a theme that is varied and full of variations—never monotonous, extremely elegant, and at times Byzantine. Underlying it all is a certain mockery of reality, tempered by the melancholy of the actual effigies—authentic, drained Golems or slumped figures in a wax museum that lacks adequate cooling. Lace, buttons, gilding, and silvering, alongside heart symbols placed in the eyes, mouth, on the cheeks, and at the feet—all these materials evoke a Matthew Gregory Lewis who became a painter centuries late, having passed through the winds of a certain carefree, lyrical spirit of the times.” …rest assured. Furthermore, the idea of bringing onto the stage—and we use the word “stage” in a theatrical sense, because (as Ciarletta and we agree) the exhibition is structured and defined in a “performative” manner—two young women with faces painted like the pupazze figures, who “hold court” in a corner of the Gallery, and dressing them (perhaps more soberly) as the doubles of those figures, represents a way of overcoming one-dimensionality. In this way, the space became occupied; there was movement; the spark of a “happening”—contained within the limits of the setting—was ignited. Visca, too, plays his part amidst his works. At ease in the world he has created, he plays with the theme—explored through fabrics and colours—as he prepares to cross from the room found within the mirror into the dimensional realm of reality, a reality that is, perhaps, invented.

(Benito Sablone, Galleria d’Oggi: Sandro Visca, “NAC”, Milan, April 1).

– On October 3, the “Sandro Visca” exhibition opens at the Il Pozzo gallery in Città di Castello, where he exhibits rag sculptures, mixed-media canvases, and painted cardboard works. The text in the exhibition catalogue is by Lamberto Giancarli.

– From October 24 to 31, the “Sandro Visca” exhibition opens at the Zodiaco gallery in Assisi. He exhibits rag sculptures, mixed-media canvases, and painted cardboard works. The text in the exhibition leaflet is by Lamberto Giancarli.

– In January, he participates in the “Premio Torino” in Turin.

– Visca is invited to the exhibition “Immagini del nostro tempo” (Images of Our Time) at the Museum of Science and Technology in Milan. He exhibits “Personaggio” (Character). May 22–31.

– He participates in the exhibition “Artisti contemporanei: Presenze abruzzesi 1970” (Contemporary Artists: Abruzzese Presences 1970) in Ortona dei Marsi. He exhibits “Personaggi” (mixed media on canvas, 120×100 cm). August 13–23.

– He participates in the exhibition “Arte 70 a Calascio” at the Calascio Town Hall, August 14 – September 5.

– Visca is invited to the 24th F.P. Michetti National Exhibition in Francavilla al Mare. He exhibits “La sposa” (The Bride) (mixed media on canvas, 120×100 cm) and “Ritratto di un personaggio che…” (Portrait of a character who…) …pensa” (mixed media on canvas, 100×120 cm), “Personaggi 70” (mixed media on canvas, 120×100 cm), “Personaggio” (mixed media on canvas, 100×120 cm). The exhibition is curated by Marcello Venturoli. August 1 – September 1.

– Visca is invited to the 4th Città di Penne Prize at the Cloister of San Domenico in Penne. He exhibits “Personaggio.” The catalogue text is by Giammario Sgattoni. August 30 – September 27.

– He participates in the “Bazar” exhibition at the Poliantea gallery in Terni. December 12, 1970 – January 3, 1971.

– In December, he takes part in the National Painting and Graphic Art Exhibition at Palazzo Suffoletta in Roccaraso.

1971
– On May 18, the solo exhibition “Visca” opens at the Saletta Filippo Palizzi in Vasto. He exhibits mixed-media canvases and drawings.

«A figure—whether male or female—that remains true to itself; not an abstract ideal chasing an evanescent past, but one anchored instead to the pressing reality of the present, to its urgency as an emotional state: this is the theme of Sandro Visca’s works. They are realized through a process of visual settling where the paintings themselves become images and emblems of life’s arabesque. The figures—standing out against opaque backgrounds and intertwining like words within the illusory trace of space—seem to ascend the tides of time until they take on the cadence of a restless existential experience. Is this not the swirling graphic line that wraps around and unfolds the absent-minded figure on the canvas like the shadow of a silence? Are these not leaves turning into hearts drawn upon imaginary trunks? The heart: a strange dream of sweat and brine, perhaps as wan as a washed-out watercolor. In the shifting colours, one senses a return to a less fleeting appearance. Space is reduced to filigree; the material texture ripples with rhythmic movement amidst the brilliant, vibrant tones. The exhibition thus focuses on the figure—whatever form it takes: even a bride lost in distant thought (“an Oriental-style bride stiff with silver flowers,” as Giammario Sgattoni noted). Even a female figure can retain its striking, evocative quality—perhaps set amidst the symbols of modern technological machinery in an ironic juxtaposition, yet redeemed by the chaotic mysteries of that perfection of life, and moving towards a cold, poetic beauty.”

(Aleardo Rubini, text from the brochure for the solo exhibition “Visca” at the Saletta Filippo Palizzi in Vasto, May 18–30, 1971).

– On June 1, the solo exhibition “Visca” opens at the Centro Santelmo in Salò. He exhibits a series of rag sculptures alongside mixed-media paintings on canvas and painted cardboard works. The catalogue features a text by Benito Sablone.

– On July 10, the solo exhibition “Visca” opens at the Museo Civico in Penne. He exhibits mixed-media paintings on canvas, painted cardboard works, and mixed-material structures. The exhibition brochure features a text by Aleardo Rubini.

– In April, he participates in the exhibition “Omaggio alla Resistenza” (Homage to the Resistance) at the Palazzo del Liceo in Avezzano.

– He participates in the “Bice Bugatti” National Prize in Nova Milanese, Milan.

– Visca is invited to the 13th Vasto Prize in Vasto.

– He is invited to the 25th F.P. Michetti National Exhibition in Francavilla al Mare. The artist is exhibiting Trittico con nuvoletta d’oro (mixed media on canvas, 170 × 132 cm), Personaggio compresso (mixed media on canvas, 70 × 150 cm), and two sculptures: Personaggio con appendice nera (stitched fabrics with polyurethane padding, 85 × 230 cm) and Personaggio (stitched fabrics with polyurethane padding, 50 × 245 cm). The exhibition catalogue features texts by Umberto Russo, Luigi Marcucci, Carlo Barbieri, and Luigi Lambertini. July 31 – September 1.

«Moving beyond a taste for linear, synthetic representations, Visca has imbued his “figures” with a substance that is no longer merely aestheticizing; they now speak a mature, ironic, and complex language—one for which colour and line, the decorative and the floral (let these terms not be off-putting), serve as nothing less than an eccentric alphabet. The artist’s maturity is evident in his ability to break free from mere “inventions”—from those ceaseless “transformations” that limit so many who cannot speak without first hearing other voices, write without having read another’s page, or paint without having “absorbed” (almost always intellectually) the solutions of those who truly create art and unequivocally grasp its dynamic role in civilization. To me, Visca’s emblems—in their repetition and variation (where variation serves only to enrich them, allowing them to become ever more truly themselves)—seem genuinely exemplary: they mock the world and unsettle the spectator (one might say “viewer” or “user,” but “spectator” is more fitting for such “characters”), acting as a counter-irritant to conformity—and to the conformist—who sometimes even flaunts the threadbare label of the bourgeois avant-garde.
The truth is that these “larger-than-life figures” (pupazze) do not wish to be taken seriously; indeed, they constantly threaten to rebel against their own creator, driven by the potent irony they possess. In doing so, they become profoundly serious and dramatic—though this happens only as a secondary effect, after they have swept away every lingering aesthetic myth.» For, ultimately, the “pupazza” [doll-like figure] is the anti-myth that occupies the empty niche to show us that the divinity was never there, or is replaceable, or must be sought elsewhere—perhaps behind the candid, amused sexual display or the cold heart of gold foil.

(Benito Sablone, text from the brochure for the solo exhibition “Sandro Visca” at the Centro D’Arte Santelmo in Salò, June 1–18, 1971).

– Participates in the exhibition “Il giornale nell’arte” (The Newspaper in Art) at the Niccoli bookstore in Pescara, promoted by the Pescara Press Association; receives an award from the Gazzetta del Popolo of Turin. September 4–12.

– Participates in the exhibition “Carnemolla – Marletta – Paolinelli – Visca” at the Nuova Dimensione gallery in Pescara.

– In August, participates in the First Painting and Graphic Art Exhibition in Santo Stefano di Sessanio. Exhibits “Personaggio compresso” (Compressed Figure; mixed media on canvas, 70×150 cm).

– Participates in the “Calascio 71” exhibition at the Palazzo Civico in Calascio. August 1–22.

– Visca is invited to the 5th “Città di Penne” Art Exhibition at the San Domenico Cloister in Penne. Exhibits “Personaggio con cuore d’oro” (Figure with a Heart of Gold; mixed media on canvas, 70×100 cm) and a mixed-media sculpture. September 5–30.

1972
During this period, while continuing his role as an artistic collaborator with the Teatro Stabile dell’Aquila (T.S.A.), he came into contact with Carmelo Bene—who produced several of his shows for the theatre—and began a close, familiar relationship with him, alongside Gino Marotta, Luciano Fabiani, Paolo Scipioni, and other theatre enthusiasts.

In the 1971–1972 academic year, a young Andrea Pazienza enrolled in the Academy stream of the State Art High School in Pescara, where he met Visca, the teacher of Figure Drawing. The very young Pazienza’s provocative attitude toward Visca was immediately so sharp that—fueled also by the affection and esteem he held for him—it became the driving force behind the creation of hundreds of caricatures and hilarious stories. His teacher became the protagonist of the drawings Pazienza produced between 1971 and 1973; it was during this two-year period that Pazienza drew his first stories featuring Visca—though there are a few later exceptions testifying to a relationship that never ended, as evidenced by brief appearances in Pentothal and Zanardi. Indeed, it was during these years that he scripted the first stories, such as “Don Viscotte della Mancia,” “Visco Little,” “Visk8 the Policeman,” and many others. The Pazienza archive reveals that Sandro Visca was the real-life figure Andrea Pazienza drew more than any other.

– Visca is invited to the 1st National Exhibition “Arte d’Oggi” at the Arte d’Oggi gallery in Pescara and receives a purchase prize for the work “Personaggio all’italiana” [Character in the Italian Style]. January 30 – February 20.

– He participates in the exhibition at the Centro G4 in Teramo. He exhibits “Esorcismo per una pioggia nera” [Exorcism for a Black Rain] (mixed media on canvas, 100×120 cm).

– He participates in the “Premio Borgosesia” in Vercelli.

– He participates in an exhibition of contemporary artists at the “Diomedea” gallery in Termoli. June 24 – July 20.

– He is invited to the 1st International Exhibition “Aspetti dell’Arte Contemporanea” [Aspects of Contemporary Art] in Montesilvano. He exhibits “Esorcismo per un malefizio d’amore” [Exorcism for a Love Curse] (painted cardboard, 70×100 cm). August 22 – September 5.

He participates in the group painting exhibition at the “Il Cubo” Art Centre in Lanciano. November 26 – December 10.

– Visca is invited by Lorenza Trucchi to the exhibition “Estensione 72” at the Casa del Mantegna in Mantua. He exhibits “Nascita di un personaggio” [Birth of a Character] (mixed media on canvas, 100×120 cm) and “Malefizio per una pioggia nera” [Curse for a Black Rain] (mixed media on canvas, 100×120 cm). November 20 – December 5.

– On July 24, the solo exhibition “Sandro Visca” opens at the Nuova Dimensione Cultural Centre in Pescara. He exhibits mixed-media structures, mixed-media canvases, and painted cardboard works.

«Since June 24th, a solo exhibition by Sandro Visca has been on display at the elegant premises of the “Nuova Dimensione” Cultural Centre in Pescara.
The opening night on June 24th was packed. All the painters from Pescara were present, along with many colleagues who had traveled from other cities in Abruzzo. Among the large contingent from L’Aquila was Luciano Fabiani, Government Commissioner of the Academy of Fine Arts of L’Aquila.
This is a highly significant solo exhibition for Sandro Visca; it features works originally destined for galleries in Piedmont and Lombardy that—thanks to fortunate professional circumstances—the people of Abruzzo can now see gathered together. It is an exhibition destined to mark a magical moment for figurative art in Abruzzo, and not just for Visca himself.
Symbolic and magical motifs permeate the entire show.
At twenty-eight, Sandro Visca once again breaks the rhythm of an already successfully established body of work; through a process of deep and painstaking exploration, he objectifies and anticipates certain fundamental motifs that are surely destined to become widespread in usage and culture.
At the heart of this artistic phase for the young artist from L’Aquila lies an attempt to harness the crisis of contemporary man and offer him an anchor, a purpose, and a justification.
Admittedly, at this stage of Visca’s output, both the nature of the crisis and the proposed solution remain clear to only a few—despite the use of specific devices, such as the raw framing of the pieces and the re-presentation of symbolic motifs within highly elegant display cases. Throughout his work, the artist’s striving to make his monologue intelligible to both critics and the general public is evident.» Yet, upon first encountering the exhibited works, it becomes clear that—for the moment—only the first objective has been successfully achieved. This is, however, a result by no means to be underestimated; quite the contrary.
Thus, at twenty-eight, Sandro Visca has further elevated and intellectualized his artistic message, garnering immediate acclaim. After all, despite his youth, Sandro Visca has a long artistic journey behind him, and the present phase represents merely one “moment” in his career as a painter.
(…)
Gone, then, are the days when a very young Sandro Visca entrusted a personal message with the task of illustrating his worldview. In the current, highly elegant catalogue, the illustration of his work is entrusted to excerpts drawn from various highly distinctive texts: Magia naturalis by Giambattista Della Porta; Jeannot, Livre de colportage; Segreti magici raccolti dal Cousin; Etteila (cited by René Schwaebré); M. Tiers, 172; Le Loyer, 830; and Tract des superst. M. Thiers, t. I, 366, 367”, etc.
Let this list not be daunting; Sandro Visca, as always, loves humanity, seeks to understand it, and strives to render it with his customary elegance and skill—just as, not long ago, he loved to deconstruct it in order to recompose it, and to probe it in order to understand it.
Thus, his current line of inquiry is not an end in itself—just as, in the past, the exploration that led him to the “Crucifixions” cycle was not an end in itself, nor was the later work that brought him to the recurring motif of the stylized woman—the “Visca woman”—as a springtime of line and colour, as the primary, ultimate, and perennial source of existence.»

(Fausto Ianni, Sandro Visca a Pescara, “L’Aquilasette”, L’Aquila, July 6, 1972, p. 2).

«If Sandro Visca could, I am certain he would delight in taking for a walk—in bringing to life, within a caricatural and hallucinatory theory of our humanity—those cloth effigies of his: figures with corsets and eyes filled with hearts, lace, and buttons; bearing on their faces the cruel fixity of the “god-puppets” (puppet-deities) of our technological society; possessing the exhausted sadness of beings bewildered by their own existence; embodying the ridiculous, ironic tragedy of modern man who, conditioned by consumer culture, clothes himself solely in outward signs and thus presents himself—time and again—as dramatically identical to both himself and others: depersonalized, reduced to the role of a mannequin.
To set them in motion, leading their black rag hearts on a leash of conditional freedom; to rouse them from their static immobility so as to capture the precise image—the true representation—of our humanity as Visca envisions it. Indeed, I know that the painter from L’Aquila—active in Pescara for the past four years—would aspire to this magical culmination of his creative labor as the pinnacle of his artistic and human journey. I know this because I glimpsed this unconscious, liberating aspiration in a photo album kept in his studio-cum-storeroom—located behind the covered market, a stone’s throw from my home and just a few dozen meters from the Galleria Nuova Dimensione, where his latest work is currently on display. Stepping into Visca’s studio is like entering a desecrated sacred space.» The windows are all shuttered, and the rooms hold a cool dampness and a shadowy silence—lit by the flashing, vivid colours of the paintings and the cold, cruel glint in the eyes of the effigies watching from every corner, propped against the walls like demystified statues of saints in a sacristy. The atmosphere is possessive; it is deeply inward yet hallucinatory enough to draw one into a state of open, cordial, unreserved confidence. It is while leafing through a photo album that I discover something far removed from a mere frivolous jest: Visca’s secret, unconscious aspiration to breathe life into his characters—to superimpose the mask of his effigies onto the real faces of his wife, Vanna, and her friend Carla, in an act of disenchanted, liberating irony. Even before I can unravel the meaning and intent of his art through his words, I realize how, in this ultimate dream, Visca entrusts the magical significance of man’s return to the freedom of being himself—of defining his own character and re-emerging as a distinct individual. This is the freedom Visca strives for and approaches through the technical evolution of his artistic process. Initially, the image is merely painted on the canvas surface; later, it takes on sculptural dimensions, where the material itself—fabric—imparts human-like movement, softness, and flexibility. The symbolic value of the puppet-man duality is evident, as is the desire—in the quest to liberate man—to extract the mannequin from the static fixity of two dimensions, bringing it to life beyond the frame and immersing it in a more human realm: the spatial dimension of movement. A movement that is complete and autonomous—possible only through a magic that neither Visca nor anyone else could ever perform, yet one in which the painter can place his hope; the same hope invested in the symbolism of his hearts, which now leads him to explore the dark, pulsating realm of our society’s magical-animistic beliefs—that irrational world of premonitions where man seems to find a final, safe refuge, and where the heart—and the heart alone—can regain the upper hand and reclaim the leading role. The heart, Visca’s hearts thus return—even if held captive within a reliquary-like case, where every magical act represents merely a modern man’s religious escape rather than true redemption, yet simultaneously serving as precious ex-votos for the grace the heart has received through this rediscovery. These symbols loom large in Visca’s artistic practice, carrying the full force of their emblematic value—an element of magic in itself. Since 1964, they have appeared in every one of his paintings: hearts solitary, small, or immense; hearts like leaves or falling rain, multiplied, red, black, or green; hearts in the pupils of figures, speaking a cruel language; hearts pinned to corsets to reclaim a lost sentiment; or hearts tethered to a puppet by a long umbilical cord, telling us we cannot do without them. All of them—repeated, fragmented, painted, or made of rag—represent nothing less than a fragment of the human dimension; they symbolize our struggle to live without emotion and measure Visca’s faith in his own salvation and that of mankind. Visca has carried this heart with him since childhood. Its current rediscovery is a cultural reclamation of his homeland—of its particular moods, its folk poetry, and the humanity of its people. Yet it is also a recovery of childhood—in a truly total sense—recalling the legends and spells that filled, in a dreamlike way, the long winter evenings he spent as a child in L’Aquila. Just as he owes the form of his fabric pupazze (effigies) to his childhood and his sister’s rag dolls, …and it is to the unconscious nature of his childhood drawings that we can trace back those spool-like necks, moon-swollen faces, cruel eyes, and the schematic, naive rendering of features. It is a simplicity, an innocence, and a directness born of unconscious, unintended inexperience. At the age of four, five, or six, he must have been more precocious; yet, he was already a master—astute and fully in command of his painterly craft—well before 1964, during his period of Crucifixion paintings. The enduring presence of childhood experiences in Visca’s art is truly remarkable; elements of that world lend a candid, poetic vigor to his work, tempering the inevitable harshness of his polemics regarding the human condition in a consumerist society. The circle from the “c’è” game appears in the compositional structure of many of his paintings; his mother’s buttons and mother-of-pearl pieces—toys from his childhood—ended up on the bodices of his pupazze (female figures), arranged in concentric circles like the chalk drawings schoolchildren once made on the rusted sheet metal of an old street in L’Aquila—marks that, alongside other mysterious signs of ancestral graphic expression, left a deep impression on him. Then there is the cruelty typical of childhood, transposed into the malevolent eyes of his figures; the act of sewing clothes for his sister Mariacristina’s dolls lives on in the creation of these pupazze—in his machine-quilted hearts and the lace stitched onto bodices or apron hems. Even the beads, pins, and protective amulets against the evil eye have returned as magical symbols within the display cases where Visca has enclosed his heart—a heart that belongs both to his childhood and to his native land. So that it might not be lost.

(Pasquale Scarpitti, I cuorimagia di Visca, “Il Mezzogiorno”, Pescara, July 8, 1972, p. 20).

– Participates in the Modern Art Exhibition at the “Il Pozzo” gallery in Città di Castello. December 16, 1972 – January 8, 1973.

1973
– The solo exhibition “Sandro Visca” opens on January 18 at the Galleria Pace in Milan.

He exhibits nearly one hundred works, including fabric sculptures, mixed-media structures, mixed-media canvases, and painted cardboard pieces.

– On February 8, the same solo exhibition from Milan is restaged at the Pacedue gallery in Turin. Both exhibitions are presented in the catalogue with the same text by Lucio Fraccacreta, a sociologist at the Agnelli Foundation.

«1. While it is true that certain recent interdisciplinary experiments could offer useful lessons for interpreting the contextual meaning of a figurative artwork, opportunities to share them for comparison with current validation methods are lacking.
Why, then, does Visca’s work seem to offer just such an opportunity? Under what conditions in the near future might Visca’s work draw the focused attention of experts from diverse fields? In fact, this phenomenon—positioning the painter and figurative art as a privileged site for rediscovery and experimentation by new disciplines—has occurred once before. At the dawn of psychoanalysis, Freud discovered the human inner world precisely through the artist—going so far as to imagine hypothetical dreams of Leonardo, which he then interpreted using psychoanalytic theory.
A significant distinction emerges from a—likewise hypothetical—parallel between research into the evolving contemporary sociocultural landscape and research within figurative art. This distinction lies between painters who, today, signal “merely” the end of a sociocultural era, and the “others”: those who pursue a line of inquiry aimed either at uncovering the hidden, implicit patterns of language and encoding experiences to be transmitted to the future human system, or at foreseeing—and thus anticipating—future systems of experience and knowledge.
Visca appears to belong to the latter group—or, rather, to the first among these “others.”
«2. It would be beyond the scope of this discussion to construct an interpretation of the contextual meaning of Visca’s work (an interpretation derived from references to contemporary sociocultural evolution and the role of figurative art).

In the work of Visca, however, there is likely an intention to present his art within the modern “shopping centre”—almost as if his work originated from the extreme periphery of an empire whose vertical technology was powerful enough to cause the detachment of neo-medieval islands at its inner margins. These are, in effect, personal islands where the state of semi-isolation is partly forced and partly a matter of vocation. It is a semi-isolation, moreover, where the psycho-cultural condition resembles a specific kind of parapsychology and magic: the sort derived from the self-implosive return of the most occult “regional” subconscious (originally not peripheral), stirred to its depths by the upheavals that “civil” epicenters trigger in the collective substratum.
In this sense, then, it is highly significant to evaluate Visca’s work in the context of the sociocultural landscape of figurative art. For Visca appears almost like a “barbarian” leading a conquest—his own work—into the very epicenter of the seismic zone where that work must be enacted and proclaimed as a conquest.

«3. In contemporary painting, the evolutionary line along which the “return to magic” unfolds is the very same one that might perhaps be termed the discovery of the inner world of man. The moment Freud theorized the “discontent in civilization,” a corresponding flight from reality emerged in painting, leading certain artists—through progressive abstraction—to a different realm.
With Mondrian, the figures representing objects and situations from the real world disappear.
With De Chirico, the appearance—the discovery—of figures from the inner world begins. From that point on, there was a growing grasp of the new language used to represent the realm of the individual and collective unconscious; by 1943, the “magical vision of life” was already a topic of discussion, and painters such as Pollock, Rothko, Tobey, and other figures of American Abstract Expressionism were fully aware of the origins that predated their own artistic themes by twenty-five years.

«4. Visca’s magical language betrays origins that are more remote and harder to date—and thus more subterranean and less self-conscious. Yet Visca’s cultural medium is more direct and consistent with its own origins than the Abstract Expressionists’ derivation from European culture was for them.
Moreover, Visca’s work compels numerous “cultured” references to the contemporary Western system of knowledge. Indeed, one can observe a complex recomposition of—so to speak—mythic elements (the female, the biological body, the underworld, etc.) with ritual elements (decomposition and composition; the miniaturization of certain coded signs driven by a kind of horror vacui; a process of progressive abstraction to which individual objects are subjected, almost to the point of elemental distillation, etc.).
Ultimately, a new model of cult emerges from Visca’s work: the objects depicted are simultaneously and reciprocally “internal” and “external.”
In the world presented in these works, the head, the heart, the autonomic nervous system, the womb, the cloud, the underworld, fire, golds, silvers, and reds acquire a complex syntactic value derived from the alchemical process—that is, the transformation of the researcher-observer’s deep Self through the act of research itself.

Jung (psychology and alchemy); Klee, Klimt, Hundertwasser, etc.; The Dadaist techniques of collage and “assemblage”—later taken up in the post-war period by artists of the Art Informel movement focused on materiality (e.g., Burri)—and the technique of object-tracing (also of Dada origin), adopted in the late 1950s by US Pop artists (Warhol): these are the artists and practices that immediately come to mind when drawing parallels with Visca’s work. Admittedly, such references may be superfluous in a presentation that does not aim for an in-depth exegetical analysis. Nevertheless, it seemed appropriate to propose them as hypotheses to be tested in a future (and desirable) study of Visca’s artistic practice—a body of work certainly worthy of continued attention—aimed at a proper exploration of its more complex meanings.

(Lucio Fraccacreta, “Visca’s Magical Metalanguage” – The Journey Through the Alchemy of the Inner Self; text from the catalogue for his solo exhibition at the Pace Gallery, Milan, January 18 – February 4, 1973).

– Invited to participate in the 5th Silvio Dodaro Biennial Prize for young artists from Southern Italy, held at the Provincial Art Gallery (Pinacoteca Provinciale) in Bari. He exhibits Black Heart on the Magic Mountain (mixed media on canvas, 100×120 cm) and Green Figure Under the Fairy Bell-Jar (mixed media on canvas, 100×150 cm). February 7 – March 3.

– Invited to the 15th Milan Triennale (Triennale Internazionale di Milano), Italian Section: “The Empty Space of the Habitat.” He exhibits Paesaggio [Landscape] (a mixed-media structure featuring volatile material driven by an intermittent motor; 550 x 35 x 250 cm). The organization and installation of the Italian Pavilion are curated by Eduardo Vittoria. September 20 – November 20.

– Visca participates—alongside artists such as Gabriele Amadori, Enrico Bay, Paolo Baratella, Fernando De Filippi, Lucio Del Pezzo, Bruno Donzelli, Ugo Nespolo, Albano Paolinelli, Andrea Pazienza, Sergio Sarri, and Giangiacomo Spadari—in the exhibition Dalla Pop(ular) Art all’Arte Popolare [From Pop(ular) Art to Folk Art] at the Laboratorio Comune d’Arte Convergenze in Pescara. He exhibits Reliquiario per un sesso di vergine italiana [Reliquary for the Sex of an Italian Virgin] (wood and sewn fabrics; 45 x 12 x 150 cm), Reliquiario per un sesso ciclopico [Reliquary for a Cyclopean Sex] (wood and sewn fabrics; 150 x 25 x 220 cm), and Formula magica sotto l’arcobaleno [Magic Formula Under the Rainbow] (mixed media on canvas; 100 x 150 cm). October 25 – November 11.

1974
– From April 14 to 24, the solo exhibition Sandro Visca opens in L’Aquila at the Scalco delle Tre Marie, located in the Palazzo Iacopo Notar Nanni. He exhibits rag sculptures, mixed-media structures, mixed-media canvases, and painted cardboard works. The exhibition leaflet features a text by Gino Marotta.

«Art as memory, celebration, and the recovery of life—challenging memory through devices and operations belonging to the silent rituals of making; repeating, through tautologies, ancient tributes and rites that transform and establish themselves as “primary” precisely in the assertive variation of their epiphany.
These are the first and most enduring impressions that come to mind regarding Sandro Visca—a man deeply rooted in Abruzzo and, specifically, in L’Aquila. It is in Abruzzo that one most clearly discerns the many Islamic influences that endowed Romanesque art with transposed codes and substances: geometric and heraldic motifs, structural layouts, abstract forms, and hosts of monsters and chimeras.
The principles governing the surfaces and spaces of L’Aquila inevitably evoke mosques and Arab architecture; the space expands upon a numerical structure—an elaboration of the square—where the combination of distinct square segments creates the expressive tension of the space itself.
Indeed, it is precisely this intermingling of abstract and chimerical codes that animates Visca’s work.
Traces reassembled through processes of fractional association—groupings that allude to the patterns of Eastern algebraists and geometricians.
A composite dimension built upon ancestral structures, formed by adding episodes retrieved from memory within a “tragically naive” theatre—a stage for performances of profound bitterness.
An elevation of mnemonic rituals whose origins hint at the demonic-angelic duality inherent in the very substance of life. Fetishes and taboos emerge and manifest themselves, alongside the pristine revival of highly sophisticated spells and fierce, impassioned, paradoxical fables—propitiatory explorations of the emotional landscapes of an ethnic collective that reaches beyond the Gran Sasso toward the desert.
Driven by the urge to seek out deeper meanings—meanings rooted in the very depths of the psyche—we might view the artist as a seeker of ideologies and ideograms. Yet, the enchantment inherent in these rituals constitutes the truest, most inviolable realm of that “doing-as-being” or “being-as-doing” that defines a painter’s work.
Thus, the Saracen—that enchanter and exorcist Sandro Visca, a privileged yet somber decipherer of arcane and distant thought processes—imbues his own existence with splendor, like a true poet.

(Gino Marotta, text from the brochure for the solo exhibition “Sandro Visca” at the Scalco delle Tre Marie in L’Aquila, April 4–24, 1974).

– Sandro Visca opens a solo exhibition at the Laboratorio Comune d’Arte Convergenze in Pescara. The show features a series of mixed-media canvases, rag sculptures, and large-scale mixed-material structures. He exhibits his first sewn tapestry, Sotto il gomitolo bianco (168 × 255 cm). December 1974 / January 1975.

– He participates in the exhibition “Incontri con l’arte contemporanea” (Encounters with Contemporary Art) in Pescara. July/August.

– He is invited to the 7th “Città di Penne” Art Exhibition at the San Domenico Cloister. He exhibits Personaggio sotterrato sotto il limone cucito (mixed media on canvas, 60×80 cm). November 17 – December 1.

1975
Sandro Visca—a passionate visitor to the mountains since his youth—began studying their literary and anthropological aspects early on; indeed, in 1975 he created the film Un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso (A Red Heart on Gran Sasso). This art film was accompanied by a serigraph portfolio introduced by Diego Carpitella and an artist’s book titled Per un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso—hand-crafted in a limited edition—both published by Studio l’Uovo dell’Aquila. In connection with this film, in 1986—having been invited to São Paulo, Brazil, by the Abruzzo Region’s Department of Culture—he provided the title for the First Brazil-Italy Expo: Un coração vermelho no Gran Sasso, where he exhibited a series of works based on the theme.

«Visca’s heart is certainly polysemic, for it is red and travels across the Gran Sasso. It might even evoke a famous title—The Future Has an Ancient Heart—recalling the work of Carlo Levi. Were that the case, the sequence’s object-images would seem to take shape in a post-atomic-conflagration setting. Cupio dissolvi, dissolution, disappearance, pain. A constellation of categories within which a procession moves toward the mountain with a movement at once melancholic and fateful—a pathological procession, for it lacks a myth. In this landscape, only the body’s vitality seems to survive, with its obsessive, meta-historical, artisanal manual activity. The signs of survival are explicit: man, his symbolic act of drawing, his demarcation of protected space, his strivings toward formalization (the heart, precisely), his forced sociality (even if merely in the village square), his adorning of himself before departure, his arranging into a procession, the ascent undertaken “as a trial,” the ritual climb, and the resolution at the summit with the final affixing of the heart.
It resembles the structural lexicon of any traditional folk pilgrimage—one Visca knows well, having partly lived it and partly re-lived it critically, en artiste. All of this is accompanied by a magical, reassuring glossolalia; invented:

At dawn on a feast day, ascend to an altitude of at least one thousand meters above sea level.
At cockcrow, sew a red cloth heart—roughly two canne in length—quilting it with genuine nettle-fiber twine.
Tie a small red silk band around the bearers’ foreheads.
At nightfall, carefully lay the heart upon a makeshift litter constructed from flowering ash rods and raffia twine.
Carry the heart to an altitude of approximately three thousand meters above sea level and leave it exposed to the elements for three days and three nights.
On the third day, slowly bring it down to the valley and abandon it, never once looking back.

The meaning of this procession will be clearer to those familiar with the variations on Visca’s heart: a mixed-media creation—surprising, naive, artisanal, sophisticated, poignant, silken, paper-based, childlike, fantastical, repetitive, handmade, etc. A heart—like those worn down in the laboratories of Barnard or Houston—that seeks to manifest itself in its persistent symbolic continuity.
To me, the journey of Visca’s images seems truly desperate, suspended even more precariously than the hope we contemporaries might harbor. It appears all the more stark in the black-and-white photography of Iammarrone—now a classic of anthropological photography.
That is, the image of man—with his little garments and scapulars reminiscent of peasant tradition—clinging to a body that is both automatic and vital.

(Diego Carpitella, text from the art book Sandro Visca: Un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso [A Red Heart on Gran Sasso], Edizioni Studio l’Uovo, L’Aquila, 1979).

– From February 15 to 27, Sandro Visca opens a solo exhibition at the “Il Cubo” Art Centre in Lanciano. He exhibits mixed-media canvases, painted cardboard works, and drawings.

– Visca is invited to the 29th F.P. Michetti International Painting Exhibition in Francavilla al Mare. He exhibits Formula magica sotto l’arcobaleno (Magic Formula Under the Rainbow; mixed media on canvas, 100×150 cm), Per una richiesta di matrimonio (For a Marriage Proposal; mixed media on canvas, 120×100 cm), and Foglie d’oro sul gallo con lo sperone rosso (Gold Leaves on the Rooster with the Red Spur; mixed media on canvas, 100×120 cm). The exhibition is curated by Giuseppe Marchiori, Franco Solmi, and Marcello Venturoli.

– He participates in the 11th Artists’ Festival—Otto presenze significative nelle arti figurative e plastiche (Eight Significant Figures in the Figurative and Plastic Arts)—at the Cloister of San Giovanni in Venere in Fossacesia. He exhibits Personaggio sotto la nuvoletta d’argento (Figure Under the Little Silver Cloud; mixed media on canvas, 80×120 cm) and a series of painted cardboard works.

1976
– On January 29, Visca opens the solo exhibition Giochi di fate (Fairy Games) at the Studio l’Uovo in L’Aquila. He presents a portfolio containing five etchings and one screenprint, alongside a series of mixed-media canvases.

In July 1976, Gino Marotta and Sandro Visca reconstructed Lucio Fontana’s work Ambiente spaziale a luce nera (Spatial Environment with Black Light, 1949) for the Venice Biennale. On this occasion, Visca met Teresita Rasini, Fontana’s wife. Despite her limited experience and the objective difficulties she described, she began—with the passion characteristic of forthright women—to work towards establishing the Lucio Fontana Foundation; to this day, it remains one of the best-managed initiatives dedicated to promoting an artist’s body of work.

– Visca participated in an exhibition organized by the Galleria de Arte Arcobaleno in Caracas, Venezuela, alongside artists Alechinsky, Appel, Ceroli, Corpora, Dalí, Ernst, Fioroni, Lam, Marotta, Matta, Moor, Pavlos, and Pozzati. July/August.

– He was invited to the 21st “Premio Villa San Giovanni” exhibition in Villa San Giovanni. He exhibited Formuletta con capitello rosso (Little Formula with Red Capital). July/August.

– In August, he participated in the “Cavallo di Troia” (Trojan Horse) exhibition in Pescara.

– On November 23, Visca opened his solo exhibition Ligamenti d’amore (Bonds of Love) at the Galleria dell’Oca in Rome. He exhibited stitched tapestries, mixed-media structures, mixed-media paintings on canvas, and drawings.

– He participated in the exhibition Grafica e multipli dello Studio L’Uovo (Prints and Multiples from Studio L’Uovo) at the Laboratorio Comune d’Arte Convergenze in Pescara. December 11, 1976 / January 8, 1977.

1977
– He is invited to a group exhibition of contemporary artists at the Bottega d’Arte Magazzeni in Giulianova Alta. June 12–28.

– He participates in the “Artisti aquilani” (Artists from L’Aquila) exhibition at the Ferriarte gallery in L’Aquila. December 23.

1978
Sandro Visca, interested in Latin American culture, organizes an expedition to South America in 1978 together with Giancarlo Papini, focusing particularly on the folk traditions of Peru.

During this challenging journey through the Andes, he documents the distinctive characteristics of villages in the Sierra and remote historic centres near the archaeological sites of Cuzco and Puno, discovering profound parallels with his own homeland.

He then travels up a stretch of the Amazon River from Iquitos and ventures into the Amazon rainforest (Pacaya Samiria), where he engages with the Jagua and Jivaro indigenous peoples. This experience—both scientific and personal—leads him to further strengthen his political stance regarding his work and artistic research.

– In September, he participates alongside Elio Di Blasio in the “Incontri 78” event at the Cloister of San Francesco in Loreto Aprutino, exhibiting mixed-media structures and mixed-media paintings on canvas.

1980
– From January 19 to 23, Visca opens his solo exhibition “Un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso” (A Red Heart on the Gran Sasso) at the Abruzzo Region Cultural Service Centres in Pescara. The exhibition features a video projection (using stills from the film Un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso by Giuseppe Iammarrone, with music composed and arranged by Ugo Fusco) and several works referencing the film’s theme.

– He is invited to participate in the “Postal Medium” exhibition (a follow-up to the 1979 “Postal Mailings” event at the Visual Arts Documentation Centre) at the Cultural Service Centres in Pescara. The catalogue includes texts by Enrico Crispolti, Umberto Russo, Adina Riga, and Franco Summa. March 6–26.

1982
– Sandro Visca is invited to the Third National Exhibition “Doppio versante” (Double Slope) in Acquaviva Picena. He exhibits Legare una stella su un’onda del mare, attendere (Tying a Star to a Sea Wave, Waiting; mixed media, 70×85 cm) and Attendere serenamente sotto le nuvole legate (Waiting Serenely Beneath Tied Clouds; mixed media, 70×67 cm). The catalogue features texts by Carlo Melloni and Elverio Maurizi. July 4 – August 1.

«In Visca’s work, the clean line and the choice of delicate tones are matched by a recurring use of symbols and metaphors—linguistic mediations for expressing what is most private and incommunicable through direct means. Emotion thus finds its natural medium of expression in the symbol, which has always been its most immediate vehicle; this is used instinctively in Visca’s finest works and, consequently, answers a profound communicative need. In these works, one witnesses not a poetic choice dictated by cultural experience and taste, but rather a surrendering to that which speaks where a speaker exists. Thus, the symbolism of the inner realm stands in opposition to the outer realm—fullness and emptiness, the masculine and the feminine—while a sense of union is expressed through lines connecting sky and earth, and through stylized, mimetic interlocking forms created by interpenetrating lines. It is, therefore, an art that is inspired yet reveals a taste for order and clarity—almost a restorative process applied to what one is, in some way, compelled to communicate.»

(Giorgio Misticoni, Sandro Visca; introduction to the catalogue for the third national figurative art exhibition “Doppio versante” [Double Slope], Acquaviva Picena, July 4 – August 1, 1982).

– Visca participates—alongside Alfredo Del Greco, Pasquale Liberatore, and Albano Paolinelli—in the exhibition “Intimità dell’indagine” (Intimacy of Inquiry: Psychoanalysis and Art – Psychoanalysis and Aesthetics) at the Abruzzo Region Cultural Service Centres in Pescara. Exhibits “Attendere serenamente il passaggio del martin pescatore” (mixed media on canvas, 200×150 cm), “Paesaggio interno” (mixed media on canvas, 200×150 cm), “La casa dei ricordi” (mixed media on canvas, 120×150 cm), “Sotto il fulmine bianco” (mixed media, 75×75 cm), “Paesaggio con nuvole” (mixed media, 75×75 cm), “Paesaggio fatato” (mixed media, 75×75 cm), “Bolla con arcobaleno” (painted wood and incised methacrylate, 77×114 cm).

The catalogue features a text by Giorgio Misticoni. December 1982 / January 1983.

1983
– Visca participates in Expo Arte in Bari, presented by the Questarte gallery in Pescara. He exhibits “La casa dei ricordi” (mixed media on canvas, 120×150 cm) and “Attendere serenamente il passaggio del martin pescatore” (mixed media on canvas, 200×150 cm).

– Participates alongside Di Vincenzo, Lustri, Mulas, Notari, and Sarri in the exhibition “Contemporanee visioni” at the Il Pentagono gallery in Avezzano. April 9–21.

– The exhibition “Intimità dell’indagine” (Intimacy of Inquiry)—Psychoanalysis and Art / Psychoanalysis and Aesthetics—is restaged at Palazzo Massari, part of the Civic Galleries of Modern Art at Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara. May 22 / June 19.

– Visca is invited to the 36th F.P. Michetti National Exhibition, titled “L’Immagine diversa” (The Different Image), in Francavilla al Mare. He exhibits Attendere serenamente il passaggio del martin pescatore (mixed media on canvas, 200×150 cm), Il tavolo galleggiante (mixed media on canvas, 200×150 cm), and La casa dei ricordi (mixed media on canvas, 120×150 cm). The exhibition is curated by Marcello Venturoli. July 30 / August 31.

«It is unclear whether Sandro Visca would prefer it said that the various underlying components of his work—and not merely his most recent output—merge into an amalgam, or that they reveal themselves variously in different results of his labor and research—like so many facets of a protean reality that is either possessed, hypothesized, or even “sensed” through the same elusive threads that steer a dream. What is certain is that the vast array of elements—whether confluent, convergent, or competing—unfolds an apparatus of essences (or perhaps semblances?) that reflects a succession of shifting motivations. Confronted with this, the technical apparatus—that is, the capacity to render these ideas through a form of “figuration” that, if not always fully intelligible, can certainly be grasped through the immediacy of instinctive enjoyment—is inevitably compelled to enrich itself with new structures and novel compositions; or, in short, to develop a “language” that is constantly in the making, offering no prospect of catharsis beyond the provisional.
There is the sedimentation of a “tradition”—a tradition of magic that has evolved into culture. This stands first and foremost as a primary component, yet one whose very nature implies such vast scope and such extensive, complex ramifications that it constantly re-emerges as a multifaceted point of departure—or, perhaps synonymously, as an indispensable point of arrival. All this is mediated by an expressive flexibility that, in turn, drives further creative processes, operating at the level of a rigorously creative use of language.»

(Giuseppe Rosato, Sandro Visca, introduction in the catalogue for the 36th Michetti Prize, Francavilla al Mare, July 30 – August 31, 1983).

– Visca participates, alongside Alfredo Del Greco, Giuseppe Fiducia, Pasquale Liberatore, and Albano Paolinelli, in the exhibition “Pietra e colore” (Stone and Colour) at the Questarte gallery in Pescara. The text in the exhibition leaflet is by Francesco Iengo. December 20, 1983 – January 22, 1984.

1984
– Visca, together with sculptor Pasquale Liberatore, opens the exhibition “Parole di terra parole nell’aria” (Words of Earth, Words in the Air) at the Quarto di Santa Giusta Multimedia Centre in L’Aquila. The text in the exhibition leaflet is by Tito Spini.
December 22, 1984 – January 15, 1985.

«Caught between those who want it dead and those who see it as more alive than ever—a long-standing dispute that nonetheless serves as an excellent pretext for a bit of dialectical gymnastics—art continues to assert itself through undeniable proofs of its existence.
Art in L’Aquila: neglected, acclaimed, often an event imposed from the outside, and too frequently teetering between the nemo propheta in patria syndrome—an old, unresolved provincial complex—and a crude, parochial glorification of local figures. What is to be done? Perhaps a good start would be to distance oneself from misleading complexes or self-satisfaction and, based on credible proposals, spark interest and submit one’s work to the public’s judgment. Some people are trying to do just that.» Since December 22nd, the Quarto di S. Giusta—a multimedia centre on Via Crispomonti—has been hosting a selection of works by Pasquale Liberatore and Sandro Visca. To mark the exhibition’s conclusion, a discussion is being held there today at 6:00 PM, featuring Professor Spini—who teaches Folk Traditions at the Academy of Fine Arts in L’Aquila—and the two artists. The event promises to be fascinating, not least due to the participation of French anthropologist François Calamns.
A man of genuine culture whose interests extend far beyond his specific professional expertise, Tito Spini has spent years traversing Abruzzo with Diogenes’ lantern in hand, searching for buried truths and treasures that might seem unlikely at first glance. His quest is driven by both rigorous scientific precision and deep personal engagement—a combination that precludes any superficial enthusiasm from the outset.
In contrast, it was precisely such enthusiasm—serving as an immediate driving force—that characterized the exploratory approach taken toward the work of Liberatore and Visca.

The archetypal enigma of Pasquale Liberatore’s sculptures leaves no one indifferent; they are a magnified re-presentation of the seeds of life—primordial pods from the dawn of time, clawed tracks from the distant past yet recreated for a near, technological future, fashioned from marble paste in molds.
And finally, Sandro Visca—or rather, a return. A return from a journey begun over twenty years ago, in search of “signs” that seemed impossible to miss, given how close they were. Yet they were so familiar that they had become invisible. The moment of recognition—a “Road to Damascus” epiphany just around the corner—the era of swollen, red silk hearts, of rituals, of barbaric and Baroque altars. Then came the time of Un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso (A Red Heart on Gran Sasso), a documentary film capturing a titanic procession (and while we are on the subject: why doesn’t someone restore it at least to the city, if not to Visca?), leading all the way to the Milan Triennale and the drawing rooms where artists are feted; but it was also a time of adventure—in the Andes and Peruvian villages—and of tapestries that were by turns ironic, tragic, or precious as an act of faith.
For the city, in any case, it is a moment not to be missed: a moment to savor the pleasure of the intellect.

(Marina Acitelli, Alla ricerca di verità sommerse [In Search of Submerged Truths], “Il Messaggero,” L’Aquila, January 15, 1985, p. 13).

1985
– Visca is invited to the exhibition “L’Onda del Sud?” (The Southern Wave?), a new Mediterranean imagery in design, held at the Castello Svevo in Bari. He exhibits Ripostiglio proibito (Forbidden Closet)—a structure made of painted wood and mixed fabrics, measuring 75x15x160 cm. The exhibition is curated by Enrico Crispolti, with critical contributions from Andrea Branzi, Riccardo Dalisi, and Alessandro Mendini.

– He is invited to the 30th “Castello Svevo” National Art Exhibition at the Civic Gallery of Contemporary Art in Termoli. He exhibits Dopo i fuochi di mezzanotte (After the Midnight Fireworks)—a structure made of painted wood and padded fabrics, measuring 180x22x205 cm.

The exhibition catalogue features texts by Filiberto Menna and Remo Brindisi. July 27 – September 14.

– He participates in the exhibition “Arte e territorio” (Art and Territory) at the Council Chamber of the Collelongo Town Hall. He exhibits Mare (Sea)—a painted collage, 50×70 cm. August 3–18.

– He participates in the “International Biennial Print Exhibit” in Taipei, Taiwan, with three graphic works.

– The solo exhibition Sandro Visca: Fuochi d’amore (Fires of Love) opens at the Questarte gallery in Pescara, featuring a series of sculptures, painted canvases, and stitched cardboard pieces. The catalogue includes a text by Enrico Crispolti. December.

«Sandro Visca is one of those “secret” artists who elude the critical yardsticks of art consumption—or rather, of consumer art (viewed through an aesthetic that has not unjustly been termed “sporting”). For twenty years, he has worked in solitude, guided by an internal consistency that responds to a deeply personal imagery; this imagery exists not “outside of history,” but rather within a history that is—first and foremost—his own (since history is ultimately shaped in concrete terms by each individual’s creative dimension), as well as within a “parallel” history, if you will, of a culturally and anthropologically distinct region—a source from which his imagery draws sustenance as it probes the area’s deepest recesses. (I recall him as a restless, very young witness to the era of the—by now legendary—Alternative Attuali exhibitions in L’Aquila during the 1960s, events remarkable for an independence that has arguably never been matched since).
Visca is not, let us be clear, a “folkloric” painter. Indeed, he explores and updates that anthropological heritage by reinventing it to suit his own imagery—an imagery driven entirely by potent symbolic evocation and a constant oscillation between symbolic narrative and iconic synthesis, the latter sometimes even aggressive in the way it seizes the viewer’s emotions and imagination. Moreover, his profound anthropological dialogue is marked by a cultivated naturalness. Visca works with symbols of striking graphic power; their assembly—and the resulting narrative progression, pared down like the Romanesque friezes found in the churches of Abruzzo—achieves a maximum level of vivid, arresting impact; Indeed, in their own way, they are provocative—I might even say terrifying (though certainly anagogic)—were it not for the fact that this imagery is evidently composed of evocative sweetness, sensuous lyricism, and distant echoes of amorous connections. It manifests, moreover, through a sumptuous visual style—almost heavy with the indefinable allure of the East (does he perhaps glimpse a fragment of a magical, distant realm from the high horizons of the Abruzzo coast?)—and a dense mode of representation that charges everything, from the symbol to its context, with an extraordinary intensity of visual texture.
This interplay of symbolic signs and textural micro-signs is all the richer for being perceived across a variety of materials (having experimented with—and subsequently carried the echo of, even onto the “painterly” surface—the extraordinarily vivid construction of totemic figures and symbols possessing a compelling, uncanny magical charge). The narrative structure of his paintings is enriched by the way symbols are articulated into ever-new and original arrangements, in a proliferation of visual propositions that constantly renew his imaginative solutions. Yet, for years, the central theme of his work has revolved around a nexus of magical amorous resonances. Ten years ago, he exhibited “paintings” in Rome on the theme of Ligamenti d’amore (Love Bindings), and this year, in Pescara, he presented Fuochi d’amore (Fires of Love). In 1979–80, he executed the performance piece Un grande cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso (A Large Red Heart on the Gran Sasso), scaling that majestic massif with a large red heart—a lost symbol of human memory set against the immensity of sovereign nature. His world is magical; thus, every element, symbolic image, and context of the “painting”—much like in the captivating, seductive, and sumptuous mixed-media constructions I call “totemic”—serves a function of exquisite magical symbolism, rich in density and evocative ambiguity. It is almost as if magical evocations of possible behaviors are taking shape—where the human, both remote and present, serves as the point of reference, yet where the transition from the natural… …to the artificial (or, more precisely, the magical) is continuous. Here, for instance, the link lies between fire qua fire (lightning, a flame) and—precisely—artificial fire. Naturally, his work probes the inner depths of man’s perennial anthropological structure—viewed not through the lens of archaeology, but through the immediacy of dialogue. I mean to say he is keenly aware of our era’s clamorous extroversion and its overpowering mass imagery (hence his use of “comic-book-style” schematizations, one might say).
The result is a festive, playful horizon of images (indeed, Visca speaks to me of reclaiming a “lost sense of festivity”). Yet here, play is not merely a release from otherwise alienating conditions; rather, it is an act of evocation, invention, and the exploration of possible, vitally significant connections. The ultimate goal is imagination as a force capable of constructing a richer world—one distinct in its animistic density, where every sign transcends itself. Each element present serves as an allusion to a deliberate symbolic figure, yet is also charged with further layers of imagery, driven by the intensity—the expressive “decor”—of the work’s own texture. That texture is always sumptuously rendered; it is never inert or merely descriptive, even when characterized by the expansive simplicity of extreme figurative synthesis. An iconology of everyday objects—grounded in the proximity of the domestic sphere—comes to life (in a truly animistic sense), revealing a capacity for symbolic resonance and unpredictability. From this springs the genesis of his characteristic narrative syncopation.
These images are lucidly unsettling precisely because of their crisp clarity—a quality that greatly enhances their symbolic articulation. And the symbol serves as both the instrument and the goal of this narrative enrichment; …of an interpenetration of everyday life with the imagery of remote, possible “elsewheres”—rendering magical every presence, every tangible fact, and every detail not only of the central image but also of the context in which it declares itself—or, if you will, appears to us—and speaking of an inalienable reality of (and right to) the fantasy of the “elsewhere” and the “otherwise”; of remote meanings that imbue life with an unstoppable allure; of a rich heritage of memories.”

(Enrico Crispolti, text from the catalogue for the solo exhibition Sandro Visca: Fuochi d’amore at the Questarte gallery in Pescara, December 1985).

1986
– The exhibition Sandro Visca: Un coraçao vermelho no Gran Sasso opens at the Expo Brasil–Italia in São Paulo, Brazil. May 10–18.

– That same year, the solo exhibition Cuciti opens at the Forte Spagnolo in L’Aquila. On this occasion, he exhibits—for the first time—nineteen large-scale stitched tapestries created between 1974 and 1985.

The texts in the Cuciti monograph are by Enrico Crispolti and Tito Spini.

«Sandro Visca’s path of languages is marked by mythical events, stony realities, festive processions, and metaphysical discoveries; it is a “cultural tratturo” [ancient transhumance trail] that records migrations from the Adriatic Ocean to the “Tibet” of the Gran Sasso massif. The Saracens who landed at Ortona, the Slavic horse traders of Lanciano, and the Albanian warriors of Villa Badessa bear—upon their steeds’ caparisons—echoes of Byzantium and the Scythians, as well as the opulence and bloodshed of the empires and wars that forged them.
Visca’s lens focuses on these images and transforms them—from exogenous elements—into iconographic history; he turns them into both suffering and celebration, presenting them anew through the filter of layering and juxtaposition. Only in this way can one enter this “stitching”—and it is no coincidence that Visca calls this intense process of tearing and construction “stitching.”
He stitches together the monastic art of Benedictine abbeys, the shadows and fires contained within the naves of San Liberatore, and the Chronicon Casauriense with its Carolingian counterpoints. These are shadows and fires not of places, but of clashing cultures. The banners of violence brought from France by the Duke of Guise, confronted by the gold and red of the Duke of Alba, form the strips of “history-cloth” that wrap Abruzzo in both its wretchedness and its splendor.
Villages are traversed by these flashes of madness, by these striking, vivid dominations. Yet, within the secrecy of homes, the community weaves its own fabrics—emblems of a pastoral and peasant culture that has infused Catholic iconography with elements of its own ancient heritage.» Through the districts walk the saints, the serpents of Angizia draped around their necks; oxen bow—and defecate—inside the church; naked Gypsies tumble down the cliffs of Pacentro, wounded and triumphant, ready to be clothed in sacred cloth. Banners embroidered with miraculous teeth; wolf skins worn by actors in the eternal enactment of the wild-versus-cultivated drama; virgin maidens laden with lace and gold; tablecloths and coverlets spread along the processional routes—these are the “fabrics of history” that the people draw from their past to trace a path of languages, a path along which Sandro Visca gathers artifacts to incorporate into his own sphere of work and ethnicity.
This path winds not only through cultural and human landscapes but also traverses natural phenomena: boulders and waters, thunderstorms and rainbows, storm clouds heavy with rain and lightning alongside cirrus clouds suspended in mountain skies, sheets of snow and golden trees, forest leaves and nocturnal fires. I do not mean to limit the scope of what is depicted here; yet nowhere else but in this Abruzzo—a land of past and present, of soaring peaks and deep ravines, of seas of water and seas of wool—could Sandro Visca have become the artisan and chronicler of such depth and wisdom, of such mature contemplation and emotional resonance.
This hermeneutic process might seem to conflict with the impulse to infuse history with myth, or reality with fantasy. Yet, in truth, does it not align perfectly with the very reality glimpsed during the Good Friday processions in Chieti or the Resurrection rites in Sulmona? As an interpreter of meaning, Sandro Visca does not seek to historicize events; instead, he interprets and stitches them together for us upon a framework prepared over millennia. These stitchings are part of a genetic makeup that explains both continuities and mutations, within a conscious and systematic sharing of the processes governing the mysterious laws of psychological reconciliation between present and past.
I recall the procession—a splendidly consistent expression of the choice to construct and live out one’s own tribal belonging. Invented by Visca in 1975 to transport a large red cloth heart from Santo Stefano di Sessanio to the summit of Gran Sasso—an initiatory test of body and mind, a challenge to silence and indifference. I perceived that ritual journey as an act of reclamation that, starting from the domestic sphere and through a symbolic gesture, dissolved the temporal space of myth. It was an attempt to spark the awakening of a place in the South—beyond ossified conventions—by retracing its own characteristic gestures, almost as if engaging with a non-materialist reading of social phenomena; a desperate attempt to break free from the molds of written anthropology.
I wish to situate Visca’s work—his “fieldwork”—within the open realm of visual anthropology, doing so neither by force nor out of a desire for controversy. There has always been suspicion toward those who wrote anthropological texts well, and later toward those who provided beautiful images for visual anthropology; one wonders what might be said today about someone who seeks to place this undertaking within the framework of anthropological inquiry and synthesis.
When Lévi-Strauss wrote Tristes Tropiques, he created not merely a document but a subtle, permeable text—a fabric of understanding for the sociocultural situation being depicted and for the acknowledgment of his own role as a witness. When Joris Ivens filmed China, his stunning images shattered stereotypes and encroached upon the fields of research and scientific communication.
Visca’s personality doubles rather than splits: narrating and interpreting, re-examining and proposing. It is a complex undertaking that moves away from mere folklore, renewing canons and parameters to assert an explicit aesthetic of folk art. The work aims to erase the fleeting trends of a mercantile bourgeoisie that creates its own primitive fetishes and celebrates its rituals around ex-votos, Neapolitan nativity scenes, and folk songs.

These stitched works—imbued with knowledge of all that has passed over the “Abruzzo Continent,” composed of news clippings and containing various relics—open up a microcosm of universal dimensions, placing the active moments of folk life along the central axis of History. And this history encompasses everything: history impaled on the swords of armies, the scythes of peasants, and the shepherds’ crooks; history woven into linen tablecloths, the lace of Pescocostanzo, and the coarse wool of transhumant herders. One reads in them fury, oppression, courage, joy, imagination, waste, and poverty. Sandro Visca’s stitched works are the banners of this nobility, embroidered pages from the vocabulary of social castes, and maps of complex cultural territories. The endeavor is to engage in visual anthropology through artistic intervention—to explore and reveal these microcosms just as historians like Duby and Le Goff do—for therein lie the seeds of the world tree.

“Birth of an Asparagus” (Nascita di un asparago), one of the most recent stitched pieces, is not an act of self-destructive exaggeration but an emblematic indication of a trail of riches that—bursting forth from a mere clump of matter—unfold in a continuous flow, much like the changing seasons.
The lesson lies not merely in the cultural aspect but also in the manual act itself. By virtue of its repetitive nature, sewing is not a solitary gesture; within the peasant community, it has always defined the scope of one’s network of relationships. He sews at the doorways of houses, on threshing floors, and in courtyards; sewing becomes a vehicle for the spoken word—a tool of communication through which Visca conveys archaic techniques of ecstasy from the realm of folk culture. Like a shaman, he stitches words and fabrics together, crafting ritual objects for the “flight,” and—from the heights he has attained—peers into the folds of history to glimpse the future.

(Tito Spini, “Antropologia e arte” [Anthropology and Art], text from the monograph Sandro Visca: Cuciti [Stitched], Edizioni del Gallo Cedrone, accompanying the solo exhibition at the Forte Spagnolo in L’Aquila, October 1986).

«Since around the mid-1970s, Visca has been creating hand-sewn tapestries—or rather, “assemblages”—composed not only of fabrics but of various object-based elements. He is exhibiting them now for the first time and collecting them in this publication, Cuciti (1986). In reality, they are true fabric-based pictures, certainly not mere decorative exercises.
The evolution of the contemporary tapestry is, as is well known, remarkably rich, unfolding along two somewhat opposing paths. The first involves the revival—and, to some extent, the provocation—of the high tradition of tapestry-making (from Lurçat to Cagli). The second is characterized by experimental approaches, employing techniques that increasingly mix and add materials—not just textiles—while pushing textile elements to the limits of their flexibility and articulation (from Depero to the recent success of avant-garde weaving).
Visca’s work naturally falls into this second category, which boasts illustrious precedents within the Italian avant-garde, starting with the Futurists. While Balla painted his tapestries on canvas—a shortcut likely dictated by economic constraints, though this did nothing to diminish the allure of those large-scale works—and while Prampolini (like Pizzo Rizzo) designed and commissioned high-warp tapestries (at least in Prampolini’s case), Nizzoli preferred to embroider his; Depero, conversely, devised a technique for assembling brightly coloured wool fabrics, reflecting the bold, expansive use of colour characteristic of his paintings (a method known today as “patchwork”). The tapestry thus became, in essence, a picture painted with different materials—specifically, textiles. It asserted a striking, almost proselytizing visual presence (in keeping with the Futurist ethos) within the domestic, everyday environment; it encroached upon and shaped that space, while simultaneously presenting itself through a materiality that was far less abstract—far more immediate and tangible—than the traditional medium of painting. It represented, in short, a different kind of painting.
However, I do not believe that the motivation behind Visca’s interest in these sewn, assembled tapestries stems from an avant-garde impulse. Instead, it strikes me as clearly anthropological in nature: the driving force is not a bold assertion of imagery or figurative language based on ideology, but rather a passionate reinterpretation—fueled by deep emotional memories—of a heritage of domestic craftsmanship and ancestral know-how. Visca taps into layers of childhood emotional impressions, developing a wholly autonomous journey of intimate dialogue between image and object—engaging with matter, fabric, and the object itself, no less than with the stitch. The allure of Visca’s tapestries lies entirely in their imaginative narrative quality and their power to evoke a magical, precious atmosphere. They speak through symbolic and allusive presences—employing a symbology that is elemental yet often cryptic (because it is private and intimate)—and through narrative hints that disarm the viewer with their fable-like, unexpected nature. A mode of expression that is not merely a matter of imagery, but of materials—of the very texture of matter—in an extraordinary and truly magical variety of components: material, chromatic, graphic, and object-based; thereby sustaining a continuous fascination—one that is, indeed, so profound… …of the overall imagery, as well as the extreme preciousness underpinning its “texture”—a texture that is itself highly varied from episode to episode and from one narrative component to the next, depending on the functional demands of the story. Within Visca’s body of work, these tapestries occupy a space between his extraordinary object-constructions—magical, exquisite, and impassioned domestic totems (such as the captivating fetishes born of the doll theme in the early seventies)—and the vivid, fantastical intensity of the concise narrative openings found in the paintings spanning the seventies and eighties. From the object-constructions, they directly inherit what I term “manual discursiveness”—that is, a dialogue with materials and signifying objects—along with a sense of the image’s physical, object-like presence; this remains true even though the image is intensely fantastical, owing to the imaginative displacement triggered by the heightened preciousness of the materials and the sheer manual virtuosity of the craftsmanship. While the tapestries may at times share certain pictorial solutions with the paintings—such as specific stylistic devices for narrative synthesis—they ultimately diverge from them; the unique richness of their materiality (especially, of course, the textiles) creates a density of presence that, in my view, surpasses the graphic expansiveness often found in the paintings, with their finely wrought, mosaic-like arrangements of exquisite, distinct surfaces. Here, in these tapestries, manual craftsmanship triumphs as an experience of a kind of private anamnesis—an adventure that, through the act of sewing and by retracing the paths of memory, constructs a unique world of imagery and materiality. It is a world of constantly surprising, fantastical vividness and persistent magical suggestion, realized across multiple layers of ancient echoes rooted in a primal symbolism of distant emotions—all relived with a sense of magical wonder, like an enveloping and disorienting fairy tale, leading toward a realm of absolute mastery and quiet attentiveness to ancient senses and lost enchantments. The fact that they are hand-sewn is essential to the expressive nature of these tapestries; yet this manual work is neither merely executive nor repetitive—it is, I would say, heuristic, and at times almost ritualistic and devotional. To sew is to seek out and construct one’s own magical, fable-like dimension; it is to tap into layers of memory and to revel—sensitively and sensually—in materials, objects, recollections, allusions, and fantastical projections. The process is naturally slow, for every step is purposeful; each move represents the identification of an element that contributes to the narrative. That narrative is shaped not only by the final resulting icon but also by the very journey of affectionate, passionate manual labor undertaken to define that image. Thus, it is not merely a fantastical image but an actual fantastical journey—one whose traces can be found in the richness of every mark, every transition, and every element: the fabric, the object, the stitch. The final image—in its richness, which is often strikingly evocative—encapsulates and elevates this vitality of the creative process; here, the act of making becomes a genuine experience of dedication to an ancient manual ritual—one redeemed from lost, atavistic depths and re-emerging from layers of distinct, personal childhood memory.
In this sense, it is clear that the anthropological origins of the motifs play a powerful role in Visca’s tapestries, linked precisely to the specific heritage of his native Abruzzo—an area of proud, archaic rusticity whose essence Visca nonetheless transforms… Each evokes, in varying degrees, a sense of magic that is unsurpassed and almost unattainable—as if to demonstrate that such a state can now only be reached through a realm of fantastic and fable-like exaltation; that is, by revealing a magical and subtly sacred dimension that is inaccessible except through total dedication to the intensity of the imagination. It is, ultimately, a private, intimate affair—akin to someone creating their own alternative horizon. Thus, Visca is not “archaeological” in the folkloric sense—nor is he archaic or given to archaism—but rather “magical,” in that he achieves an unreal, exquisite quality of satisfaction (primarily his own) that is both fantastic and magically sensual.
If one looks for an internal dynamic across more than ten years of work, one can observe—I believe—a greater totemic concentration in the earlier tapestries (dating from the 1970s), which were executed on a massive scale; conversely, the later works—more modest in size—show a greater narrative inclination and, in a sense, engage more directly with Visca’s painting, whereas the earlier pieces bear the stronger imprint of his previous experience with mixed-media object constructions. For instance, consider the recurring theme of the “landscape”: in the earlier works, it is more enigmatic and mysterious, while in the later ones, it unfolds into a fantastic narrative that, though essential in form, is certainly more discursive in its description of various elements.
In any case, these are objects of extraordinary preciousness; they transpose the image to a level where that precious quality—at once material and iconic—becomes magical and all-enveloping in its fantastic nature. Here, then, the qualities characteristic of Visca’s imagery are celebrated—qualities that, moreover, circulate with equal evocative authority across the various artistic paths he has traversed and those he pursues simultaneously. For Visca is an artist who works freely across different modes of creation, all driven by a shared impulse toward a kind of wondrous displacement—an effect he achieves with varying intensities depending on the specific creative opportunities he cultivates.

(Enrico Crispolti, “Gli arazzi” [The Tapestries], text from the monograph Sandro Visca: Cuciti [Stitched Works], Edizioni del Gallo Cedrone, for the solo exhibition at the Forte Spagnolo in L’Aquila, October 1986).

With Sandro Visca’s Cuciti (Stitched Works)—exhibited at the 16th-century fortress in L’Aquila after more than a decade of uninterrupted, solitary experimentation—the history of contemporary tapestry gains a novel chapter. The design (graphic sketch/cartoon) and the execution of the work are both the artist’s own, sweeping away the ideological distinction between art and craft; the act of painting is restored to its primal unity, with canvases, brushes, and paints replaced by needle, thread, buttons, fabrics, leathers, and the like. The assembly of humble materials—both decorated and decorative—echoes stylistic elements dear to New Dada, though these are aesthetically softened by an Art Nouveau atmosphere. In these authentic pictures—painted en plein air entirely within the mind—Klee’s “Theory of Form and Figuration” takes shape in enchanted landscapes, preserved by Visca’s creative magic from the ecological metastasis caused by techno-scientific progress. The physical presence of little houses, meadows, roots, asparagus, waves, clouds, lightning bolts, and stars—all of which belong to the ecosystem—is rendered in just two dimensions: a horizon line acts as a dividing line between high and low, above and below, and as a conceptual link between experienced magic and evoked reality. “Once upon a time”—one is tempted to label Visca’s narrative as a fairy tale. Yet the ethical implications are quite different; one might say they stem from a radical refusal to passively accept the death rattle of a nature scarred forever. Hence the abandonment of “metaphysical” reason and the rejection of Renaissance perspective; hence the triumph of an “infantile” imagination—iridescent and unpredictable—that shapes an alternative reality. There is more. The unhurried pace of cutting and sewing mirrors that of weaving and sowing—the flip side of Art Informel, where the speed of a different kind of gesture screams rage and protest. On one side, the patient time of nature; on the other, the accelerated time of history. Visca’s work can certainly be situated within the “pattern painting” movement—provided one does not confuse the “slang” of American artists with the “dialect” of Abruzzese culture.

(Antonio Gasbarrini, Sandro Visca, “Questarte” 52, Pescara, December 1986, p. 108).

At the close of the exhibition “Cuciti” [Stitched], the President of the Abruzzo Region, Gaetano Novello, acquires the work “Sogno di un paesaggio di mare” [Dream of a Seascape] (stitched tapestry – 155×195 cm – 1986) for the Abruzzo Region’s art collection.

– Visca participates in a group exhibition of contemporary artists at the Archaeological Museum of Split in Split, Croatia.

– He is invited to the 38th F.P. Michetti National Painting Exhibition, themed “Il mare” [The Sea], in Francavilla al Mare. He exhibits “Onda anomala” [Rogue Wave] (mixed media on canvas, 200×150 cm), “Grande fuoco di mare” [Great Sea Fire] (mixed media on canvas, 200×150 cm), and “Sogno di un paesaggio di mare” [Dream of a Seascape] (stitched tapestry, 155×195 cm), and is awarded a purchase prize. The exhibition is curated by Enrico Crispolti. July/August.

– He is invited to the Eighth “Città di Penne” Exhibition, titled “Disponibilità dell’Immagine” [Availability of the Image], held at the San Domenico Cloister in Penne. Exhibits La cassapanca dei giochi proibiti (mixed media on canvas, 120×150 cm), La scatola dei fuochi (mixed media on canvas, 133×205 cm), Il tavolo della festa (mixed media on canvas, 200×150 cm), and Quando cadono le stelle (mixed media on canvas, 133×205 cm). August 2–25.

– Participates in the exhibition “Arte & Territorio” (Art & Territory)—themed “Man and Nature”—at the Municipal Schools in Collelongo. Exhibits La scatola dei fuochi (mixed media on canvas, 133×205 cm) and Dolce tempesta (painted collage, 50×70 cm). Curated by Marcello Ventuoli. August.

– Visca, together with Alfredo del Greco, Elio Di Blasio, Giuseppe Fiducia, and Franco Summa, participates in the exhibition “Cinque artisti e una città” (Five Artists and a City) at the Questarte gallery in Pescara. Exhibits Grande fuoco di mare (mixed media on canvas, 200×150 cm), Ricordo di un’isola sognata (mixed media on canvas, 100×150 cm), and Ricordo di un paesaggio sognata (mixed media on canvas, 100×150 cm). Curated by Eugenio Riccitelli. July 19 – August 30.

– Invited to the Cappelle sul Tavo National Painting Prize at the Mammuth Centre in Spoltore. Curated by Mario De Micheli. November 15–23.

1987
This year saw the creation of the hand-woven carpet Notturno da terra (290 × 230 cm), commissioned by Visca based on his own design during a trip to Turkey.

– Visca is invited to the exhibition Alternative attuali Abruzzo 87 at the Forte Spagnolo in L’Aquila. He exhibits La scatola dei fuochi (mixed media on canvas, 133 × 203 cm), Quando cadono le stelle (mixed media on canvas, 133 × 203 cm), Ricordo di un paesaggio sognato (mixed media on canvas, 100 × 150 cm), and Paesaggio di fuoco (mixed media on canvas, 100 × 100 cm). The exhibition is curated by Enrico Crispolti. March 22 – April 26.

– Sandro Visca restages his solo exhibition Cuciti at the Questarte gallery in Pescara. April 9–25.

– Visca exhibits three stitched tapestries at the Galerie du Pommier in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He shows Nascita di un asparago d’oro (stitched tapestry, 150 × 198 cm), Notturno marino (stitched tapestry, 150 × 197 cm), and Pelle di paesaggio (stitched tapestry, 145 × 200 cm). May–June.

– He is invited to the exhibition Caitanya (Art for Peace) at the Palazzo Venezia in Rome. The texts in the catalogue are by: Jolena Baldini, Carmine Benincasa, Angelo Calabrese, Renato Civello, Enrico Crispolti, Giorgio Di Genova, Antonio Gasbarrini, Domenico Guzzi, Italo Mussa, Ugo Piscopo, Pierre Restany, Pier Carlo Santini, Marcello Venturoli, and Marisa Vescovo. He exhibits Paesaggio con nuvoletta bianca [Landscape with Small White Cloud] (a stitched tapestry created for Casa Vogue, 97×153 cm). May 7 – June 15.

– On June 6, the solo exhibition “Sandro Visca” opens at the La Stadera gallery in Sulmona. He exhibits stitched tapestries and stitched cardboard works.

– Visca is invited to the exhibition “Itinéraires Parallèles” at the Palazzo del Ghiaccio in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. The exhibition is curated by Enrico Crispolti. May 15–25.

– He exhibits an artist’s book—a handmade, limited-edition work titled Per un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso [For a Red Heart on Gran Sasso]—at the exhibition “Dalla Bibbia di Gutenberg al libro telematico” [From the Gutenberg Bible to the Electronic Book] at Casa D’Annunzio in Pescara. The exhibition is curated by the publishing house Casa Editrice del Gallo Cedrone. August 6 – September 12.

– Invited to the exhibition “Parallel Itineraries” (Festitalia 87) at the University Art Gallery – McMaster, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Exhibits Piccolo paesaggio in bianco (stitched tapestry, 105×98 cm) and Grande fuoco di mare (mixed media on canvas, 200×150 cm). Curated by Enrico Crispolti.

– Participates in the exhibition “20 Artisti per il Nicaragua” (20 Artists for Nicaragua), organized by the Italy-Nicaragua Association of Avezzano. October 21–29.

– The exhibition “12 Piatti di 12 Artisti” (12 Plates by 12 Artists)—conceived by Visca—opens at the Scalco delle Tre Marie in the Palazzo Iacopo Notar Nanni, L’Aquila. Exhibits Asparagi (unique ceramic plate, 30 cm diameter).

1988
Visca opens the Scuola Italiana d’Arte (Italian School of Art) in Pescara; for two years, he serves as its director and teaches painting and graphic drawing techniques.

– Participates in the Prima Mostra di Artisti Abruzzesi (First Exhibition of Abruzzese Artists) in aid of the UILDM, held at the Sala dei Marmi of the Province of Pescara. January 4–9.

– Visca is invited to the “Mare & Mare” International Sea Biennale (Il mare nelle arti visuali / The Sea in the Visual Arts) at Castel dell’Ovo, Naples. Exhibits Onda anomala (mixed media on canvas, 200×150 cm). Curated by Marcello Venturoli. June.

– He is invited to the “Dittico” exhibition at the University of L’Aquila, Faculty of Education. He exhibits “Stelle di fuoco” and “L’uccello cometa” (painted collage, 50+50×56 cm). The exhibition is curated by Antonio Gasbarrini. June 1–12.

– Visca participates in the “Itinerari paralleli” exhibition at the Montesilvano Congress Centre. He exhibits “Notturno marino” (stitched tapestry, 150×197 cm). The exhibition is curated by Enrico Crispolti. May 23 – June 12.

– He is invited to the “Alternative attuali 88” exhibition—Pittura per musica (Painting for Music)—held in the courtyards of the Convitto Nazionale and the Palazzo di Città, where I Solisti Aquilani and violinist Felix Ayo performed under the direction of Maestro Vittorio Antonellini.

– Exhibits “Summer, 2nd Movement – Antonio Vivaldi” (a series of 6 panels created using collage, paint, and stitching; 50×70 cm each). Curated by Enrico Crispolti. July 23 – August 7.

– Participates in the “Artisti per L’Aurum” (Artists for L’Aurum) exhibition at the former Aurum complex in Pescara.

– Visca is invited to the “Laboratorio d’Abruzzo” (Abruzzo Laboratory) exhibition—part of Ripe 88—at the Pinacoteca Comunale in Ripe San Genesio. He exhibits “Caduta di una stella” (Falling Star; stitched fabrics, 34×34 cm), “Fuoco marino” (Sea Fire; stitched fabrics, 34×34 cm), and “Fuochi sulla montagna” (Fires on the Mountain; stitched fabrics, 34×34 cm). Curated by Enrico Crispolti. July.

1989
– Sandro Visca, “Il quadro del mese” (Painting of the Month), Florian Espace Cultural Association, Teatro Florian Espace, Pescara. Exhibits “Paesaggio interno” (Interior Landscape; mixed media on canvas, 200×150 cm). March 4.

– Visca is invited to the “Duplice versante” (Dual Slope) exhibition—the 4th Contemporary Art Review—at the Town Hall of Campomarino. He exhibits “Piccolo paesaggio in pelle” (Small Leather Landscape; stitched tapestry, 50×50 cm). July 1–15.

– He is invited to the exhibition “Arte Abruzzo 90/1: Ragioni e finalità di una proposta” (Art Abruzzo 90/1: Reasons and Aims of a Proposal) at the Spazio Arte “Di Loreto” in Pratola Peligna. He exhibits “Tramonto di fuoco” (Fiery Sunset; mixed media on… …canvas, 100×100 cm), “Tempesta al pistacchio” (mixed media on canvas, 100×100 cm). The exhibition is curated by Carlo Fabrizio Carli. July 15–30.

– Visca is invited to the 6th “Amore & Amore” International Painting Prize in the Municipality of Lampedusa. The exhibition is curated by Marcello Venturoli. August.

1990
– Visca is invited to the 10th City of Penne Art Exhibition, “Il segno e i suoi dintorni” (The Mark and Its Surroundings), 1990–91 Biennial. He exhibits “Dopo i fuochi di mezzanotte” (painted wood structure and padded fabrics, 130x22x180 cm) and “Ripostiglio proibito” (painted wood structure and fabric blends, 75x15x160 cm). The exhibition is curated by Antonio Gasbarrini and Renzo Margonari. July 28 – August 25.

1991
On January 17, he was invited by the Institute of Romance Languages at the G. D’Annunzio University in Pescara to participate in the conference “Peru in the Fifth Century Since the Conquest.” In his presentation, titled “Peru: Travel Notes,” Visca discussed his experiences in the Andes while projecting a large number of colour slides selected from the nearly four thousand images captured during his expedition to the Peruvian Sierra and Amazon. On this occasion, he met Joaquin Roca-Rey, a refined sculptor of surreal, imaginative forms who had served for many years as the cultural attaché at the Peruvian Embassy in Rome. Visca invited Roca-Rey to his studio, sparking a warm mutual esteem that led to a lasting friendship and an exchange of views on both artistic work and the harsh reality of Peru—a situation that caused Roca-Rey deep personal anguish.

– Visca opened his solo exhibition, “The Gardens of Love” (I giardini dell’amore), at the exhibition space of the L’Acacia publishing house in L’Aquila. He exhibited sewn tapestries, mixed-media sculptures, and sculptures made of bronze and iron. The exhibition brochure included two limited-edition graphic works, numbered and signed by the artist. The accompanying texts were written by Sandro Visca and Fernando Tempesti.

– Sandro Visca was invited to participate in the exhibition “Textilia 91: Woven Painting – Second European Comparison: Spain,” alongside artists Enrico Accatino, Giacomo Balla, Afro Basaldella, Mirko Basaldella, Corrado Cagli, Fortunato Depero, Piero Dorazio, Pasquale Liberatore, Bruno Munari, Enrico Prampolini, and Mauro Reggiani. Exhibits Nascita di un asparago d’oro (stitched tapestry, 150×198 cm) and Ricordo di un paesaggio sognato (mixed media on canvas, 100×150 cm). The exhibition is curated by Enrico Crispolti. December 9–22.

– That same year, the solo exhibition “Visca” opens at the Experientia Arte & gallery in Teramo. Works on display include stitched tapestries, mixed-media canvases, and painted, stitched cardboard pieces. The exhibition brochure features a text by Nerio Rosa. November 30 – December 27.

“Visca’s works contain no trace of anecdote, no narrative progression, no mysterious allusions, and no eclectic quoting; everything converges and is heightened in the static, transparent representation of surface elements and their construction—which is neither conceptual nor naturalistic, but rather dreamlike in the immediate communicative power of a line that sharply defines environmental symbols, perceived through innocent, essentializing eyes.
The materials, too, are warm, soft, and intimate—featuring mixed-media juxtapositions of fabrics, collages, and paint—that consistently evoke the purity of a serene, reassuring setting, captured within an imaginary realm of primary, iconic symbols with a playful, fairy-tale quality.”

These are the icons of a first discovery of the world through the still-pure, uncontaminated eyes of an inner genius—one who captures, with childlike imagery, a timeless landscape of sharply essential motifs: arcs of sky, night scenes, leaves, flights, clouds, house silhouettes, sea waves, stars, and lightning bolts. In the stitched tapestries, these elements become charged with redundancies, coloured grids, dense pigmentation, and rich, polychrome textures, evoking the sensation of a dream. Its clarity distances and transcends a fundamental lightness—one that retains a sense of centrality—contrasting with the disorientation and nomadism that permeate the complexity of the contemporary world. It is as if Visca had cultivated a primal discovery of the world in its simplest, most rarefied forms, bypassing the cultural mediations of the nihilistic crisis—a crisis that unsettles those confronting the dynamic, scattered nature of social and anthropological history—in order to uncover, beneath and beyond it, a reassuring profile and an intimacy unbroken by the surrounding environment. The play of the “eternal child” archetype within us manages to fix this vision using a few firm reference points in two-dimensional images born of a reinterpretation of the intimate landscape of those early discoveries. Yet, the intricacy of the execution lacks the simplicity of rediscovering a fairy-tale world through the eyes of a child, or through an adult employing that aesthetic in the manner of a cartoonist or advertising artist. Instead, there is an artisanal mastery that focuses on minimal, novel forms, reflecting the care and wistfulness of someone who has discovered small worlds embedded in everyday life—worlds that are simultaneously “parallel,” viewed with the warm, close-up gaze that captures them. The image thus reveals a new dimension that eludes us, yet remains magically present for those open to embracing it, the moment it takes hold in reverie. Hence the dreamlike quality of objects—ever-present in these small, recalled works—and the engagement with the resonances of a setting (though without the intent of mere scene-setting). It is an attentiveness to the minute, gentle presences of a contemplative daily life; not an analytical intellectual reflection, but a direct grasping of the symbol that lingers in the imagination. More than a desire to depict lost play or the innocence of a gaze we no longer possess, there is a fixation on the icons of a perennial childhood landscape—one that civilization cannot erase without losing the warm intimacy of tactile and visual sensations from that colourful, forbidden, fairy-tale world that binds us in harmony with nature, prior to the intervention of reflective thought.
Is this why Visca pursued his artistic quest in such isolation? It seems to us, rather, that he followed a path entirely his own, addressing—through his own unique response—some of the central issues defining the artistic and cultural climate of our time.

While Baj served as a stylistic point of reference for Visca in years past—owing to his rich, mixed-media use of colour and the two-dimensional rendering of his icons—he left no trace of the historical or topical echoes of emblematic events typical of the era of ideological commitment. As the age of ideologies waned, Visca maintained a consistent and coherent approach to illustrating his own fantastical world; he focused on simple, essential visions of enduring moments, imbued with an affectionate attachment to primordial signs that nonetheless transcend time and space. In this way, Visca did not face the central challenges of an age of uncertainty and disorientation in isolation; rather than seeking escape—or retreating into the unreal, magical universes often conjured by the artificial realism of ideologies—he sought to rediscover the eternal images of memory. Amidst the unmanageable complexity of the present, he aimed to identify the vital, immediate graphic signs of what truly matters—escaping erratic indeterminacy not through the lens of transient history, but through the simplest, most essential occurrences. He achieved this by turning toward a warm world—one deeply connected to the fundamental signs of life and the environment—which can only be rediscovered by those who have cultivated a sense of disenchantment regarding the rigid certainties of iconoclasts, and who view the world with the pure eyes of primal discovery characteristic of both the infancy of a human life and the dawn of any civilization.

This is precisely what the postmodern wave attempted to do: once the certainties of Modernity’s grand ideological narratives had collapsed, it sought to rediscover—through eclectic juxtapositions of past and recent eras—a new kind of virginal citation, liberated from the contextual meaning imposed by a binding historical and social continuity. Yet, whereas Postmodernism pursued this path by prioritizing a fluid, transversal complexity among diverse icons—aiming to restore significance to worn-out semantic models (as seen in the work of Meyer Vaisman, who employs a mixed-media language comparable to the artist in question but interweaves ancient and modern imagery in his tapestries)—Visca takes the opposite approach. He foregrounds primary icons drawn from a timeless, spaceless anthropological imagination; these serve as an anchor for analytical elements—rich, complex, expansive, and redundant—that demonstrate an awareness of navigating contemporary life and a seething, superabundant reality, while simultaneously governing their meaning by tracing them back to elementary models of supra-historical purity. Through this reverse trajectory, Visca appears to suggest isolation; in reality, however, this represents a coherent inversion of the quest to restore meaning to the groundlessness of the postmodern age—an era in which he is fully engaged. He simply proposes a more direct search for pristine images that prevail over disorder, rather than yielding to the dominant trend that privileges complexity over primordial simplicity.

(Nerio Rosa, Coerenza ed epocalità nei lavori di Sandro Visca [Coherence and Epochal Significance in the Works of Sandro Visca], text in the brochure for the solo exhibition “Visca” at the Experientia Art & gallery in Teramo, November 30 – December 27, 1991).

1992
– Visca creates the installation “Firmamento di terra” [Firmament of Earth] (straw bales and flame-effect lights) in the town square of Collelongo. The event is organized by the Teatro dei Colori of Avezzano. January 4–5.

– From May 7 to June 30, the exhibition Sandro Visca: Paesaggi di fate [Fairy Landscapes] opens at Studio Spica Design in Rome, featuring sculptors Marcello Aitiani, Mauro Berrettini, Rinaldo Bigi, Nado Canuti, Pietro Cascella, Annamaria Cesarini Sforza, Girolamo Ciulla, Daniel, and Cordelia Von Den Steinen. He exhibits stitched tapestries, mixed-media painted canvases, and stitched cardboard works.

– Sandro Visca is invited to the Seville World Expo (“Expo 92”) for the exhibition Pabellón de las Artes – Algunos recorridos del arte contemporáneo en Italia [Pavilion of the Arts – Some Paths of Contemporary Art in Italy] in Seville, Spain. He exhibits “Paesaggio” [Landscape] (stitched tapestry, 142×195 cm), “Paesaggio” [Landscape] (stitched tapestry, 170×230 cm), “Paesaggio” [Landscape] (stitched tapestry, 160×200 cm), “Notturno marino” [Marine Nocturne] (stitched tapestry, 150×197 cm), and “Pelle di paesaggio” [Landscape Skin] (stitched tapestry, 145×200 cm). The catalogue includes texts by Paolo Portoghesi and Egidio Maria Eleuteri. September 21 / October 12.

1993
– Visca participates in the “Omaggio a Spoltore” (Homage to Spoltore) exhibition. He exhibits L’albero dei sogni (The Tree of Dreams)—a sewn tapestry measuring 50×50 cm. Spoltore, September 25 – October 2.

1995
– In April, the solo exhibition “Sandro Visca” opens at Brioni Roman Style on 52nd Street in New York. He exhibits a series of painted and sewn cardboard works.

On March 13, 1995, Ruggero Pierantoni—a researcher at the Institute of Cybernetics and Biophysics of the CNR (National Research Council) in Genoa, a scholar of neuroscience and cognitive psychology, and a Visiting Professor at the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia—visits Visca’s studio. He reviews the artist’s work in order to write an introductory text for the solo exhibition “Sandro Visca: 1974–1994,” held at the Sala del Diritto Comune in the Palazzo Ducale of the University of Camerino (October 21 – November 4, 1995). During this meeting, Visca engages in a stimulating exchange of views with Pierantoni regarding the design choices for Grande firmamento (Great Firmament), an environmental installation created for the summer events organized by the Ente Manifestazioni Pescaresi (August 1995).

“How is it possible to live in such an orderly environment?” wonders his friend Pierantoni, stepping into Visca’s studio for the first time. For a moment, the usual cliché is reversed: the scientist is the one expected to be rigorous and precise, while the painter is supposed to be immersed in the chaotic—albeit creative—disorder typical of artists. Yet here, there is nothing of the sort—no paintings or tapestries hung in neat rows; no canvases leaning tidily against the walls as if freshly dusted; no balls or spools of thread carefully arranged on shelves; no buttons, needles, or trimmings stowed away in boxes like in a meticulously organized haberdashery. Everything seems to have found its own specific place—the only place for it—within an almost sacred order that leaves the visitor bewildered.
“This sense of order stems from my upbringing, from my background… And today, it represents my natural way of being. But it is also a way of defending myself against certain mental disarray I experience in my relationship with the world—an unconscious reaction to everything within me that feels out of place, and to everything in the world that I wish were more humane, more civilized…” Civilized—precisely. You immediately realize that this adjective best encapsulates the artist’s multifaceted yet clear-cut personality, offering a glimpse of the man—even just his outward appearance.
Tall and lean, with a proud face framed by a neatly trimmed beard and the manners of a gentleman—qualities not belied by his casual attire (jeans, sneakers, and a pullover), which actually reveals a meticulous attention to decorum and outward precision—Visca wears his fifty years with effortless elegance. Everything about him conveys a sense of tolerance, openness, and a willingness to engage in dialogue—in a word, civility. Yet, his eyes reveal that this is neither neutrality nor—much less—English impassivity; rather, there is a softness and warmth in his gaze that seeks a meeting of minds, human warmth, and a sign of mutual understanding with others. This reveals the “kindness” of a soul deeply rooted in Abruzzo and its traditions—in those “cultural layers” from which he was able to “draw the inspiration and motivation for his creative inquiry.”
Visca is one of those artists who, driven by a deep emotional attachment, chose to live and work in Abruzzo, thereby practicing the daily virtue of “resistance” in the face of institutional cultural indifference.
“I returned to Abruzzo in 1968 because I did not believe in the political climate of the time, nor in the idea of joining the protest movement. Instead, I believed in a different path forward—one based on revisiting the past to point toward new ways of building a society. Unfortunately, that did not happen. Yet, I remain convinced that to truly express oneself, an artist cannot be beholden to anything—not to success, critics, or the market, and certainly not to the demands of the powers that be. Personally, I have sought to live out my life as an artist in a state of total freedom of thought, unencumbered by any external constraints…”
Painter, sculptor, tapestry artist, part poet and part philosopher, Visca has expressed himself through a multifaceted body of work—which even includes an art film—driven by an innate curiosity for experimentation and the search for new ways of being; for, as he likes to say, “truth does not exist, yet it would be disastrous not to seek it.” Having started out as a figurative painter, and following a post-Informel phase, he returned to the figure, gradually transitioning to the depiction of that magical world, …fable-like quality of his recent work, in which “sewing”—that intense process of “tearing and constructing”—plays a fundamental role; critics have identified complex psychological and anthropological motivations behind this practice.
More simply, for him, sewing represents the revival of a passion that began as a childhood game; in the isolated house outside L’Aquila, he used to amuse himself by making clothes for his sister’s dolls or costumes for the plays he invented in a small theatre built in the garden.
“That is how, in the 1970s, I began making rag sculptures—fetishes and enormous figures—created from various fabrics and other embellishments. Then, in 1974, I produced my first sewn tapestry, leading up to my recent pictures, which are made of fabric even though they are stretched over a frame.”
You speak of the practical process, but what part does inspiration play in an artist’s work?
“Inspiration is something invented by amateurs and subculture. Painting professionally is a job, and as such, it must be approached with respect—even when you don’t feel like doing it or are bothered by the physical strain. An artist’s role is not that of a visionary dreamer waiting for inspiration, but rather that of an individual who engages directly—through their own conscience and participation—with the issues facing the world.” It is a world, however, that Visca observes with growing unease due to the “vulgarity of the social realm” looming over it—a force that seems to drive him to evoke, in his cuciti (stitched works), a remote, magical universe. This world is at times lost in the sumptuousness of Byzantine-style imagery, and at others described with nostalgia through the simplicity of a natural, primal Abruzzo—reduced to its essential signs: the sea, nature, the mountain…
There are no human figures in Visca’s stitched works, as if human presence could only bring disorder to that universe—one that is clean, crisp, devoid of nuance or ambiguity, and often played out in a single colour: pink, gray, white, or azure. Or as if humanity might disturb the motionless magic of moments that rise to the level of cosmic events—and thus demand our respect: the birth of an asparagus, the falling of gold leaves, the wait for the golden pheasant, as the titles of certain pieces declare.
Indeed, starting with the geometric precision of his titles, Visca seems intent on imposing order, putting everything in its place, and leaving no room for misinterpretation or the kind of speculative over-analysis that feeds on itself while losing sight of the simplicity and perfection of the existence he wishes to portray—a model for our own schizophrenic lives.

(Daniele Cavicchia, La civile “resistenza” nelle opere di Visca [Civil “Resistance” in Visca’s Works], “Il Messaggero”, Pescara, June 1, 1995, p. XIII).

– In August, at the invitation of the Ente Manifestazioni Pescaresi, Sandro Visca created the installation Il grande firmamento (The Great Firmament) at the Ex Gaslini complex in Pescara (featuring a wooden structure, a floor tilted at five degrees and lined with black felt, a completely darkened interior, and a ceiling painted on black canvas using fluorescent tempera and illuminated by Wood’s lamps; entrance measuring 2 x 2 x 2.50 m, enclosed by black curtains; interior space measuring 5 x 5 x 3.50 m).

Music taken from:

NEW MUSIC

Gazzelloni / Maderna

Karlheinz Stockhausen

KONTRA-PUNKTE

Krzysztof Penderecki

AUX VICTIMES DE HIROSHIMA – THRENE

Frederick Rzewski, pianist

Soloists of the Rome Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bruno Maderna

The text in the exhibition catalogue is by Daniele Cavicchia.

«Any one of us could suddenly find ourselves lost. We might lose our way in a forest, in the streets of a big city, or right outside our own homes in the fog—much like the father of the protagonist in Fellini’s film Amarcord.
Yet sometimes, we lose ourselves within—or within anguished dreams—and upon waking, we seek an anchor, something familiar, to re-establish our bearings. At other times, getting lost becomes a desperate choice, an alienated and artificial means of escaping reality.
Then again, getting lost can mean becoming scattered: lost in the haste and triviality of daily life, in superficial relationships, and in the web of obligations and excuses we constantly construct to avoid pausing for a moment of self-reflection.
Walking with one’s head bowed has become the norm for most people—a way of losing oneself while walking, a way of failing to recognize others, and a way of becoming unrecognizable even to oneself.
However, we might suddenly encounter something beautiful and unusual—something that compels us to stop and look up, driven by an instinctive inner call that reason cannot explain. It could be a landscape, a sculpture, a painting, or a poem—anything that momentarily captivates our senses and prompts us to reflect.
In that moment, the work becomes a pretext for a conversation with oneself—a chance for introspection and a way to discover whether we are still capable of appreciating beauty and discerning good from evil.» Here, then, is the artist—more accustomed to communing with the spirit—acting as an intermediary, albeit reluctantly (for the true artist creates for himself), between the self we know (and somewhat fear) and the other self: the one still capable of wonder, like Pascoli’s fanciullino (the inner child).
Sandro Visca’s Il grande firmamento (The Great Firmament) seems to adopt this provocative stance: provoking an encounter with our own selves—a meeting we had long postponed but can no longer evade within the dark, confined space of his cube.
The infinitely large and the infinitely small; the universe and man. Everything seeks its opposite and eventually finds it, in accordance with an unwritten law. Confined within the room’s disorienting darkness—poised between vertigo and balance—and compelled to gaze up at the starry sky Visca has recreated on the ceiling, the viewer is inevitably drawn back to their own inner self. They rediscover who they are—if only for a moment—after having long been lost. For the infinite space opening up before their eyes, captivating them with its points of light, mirrors the unknown abyss of their own soul—a realm they fear to explore yet one that, despite themselves, yawns wide before them. Visca’s magic box is intended as a benevolent trap set for the unsuspecting visitor—laid with a blend of playfulness and seriousness, reflecting the artist’s affable and gentle nature—to “compel” them to seek the heavens, to discover the wondrous architecture of the stars, to lose themselves for once in the immensity of space rather than in the confines of their own limitations, and ultimately to reveal their own infinite nature. We are familiar with Visca’s crisp, poetic landscapes, where stars peek out—distant and twinkling, much like in children’s drawings. These are landscapes that appear deceptively naive, motionless, and unreal—like an escapist dream—offering the eye a place to rest and find renewal away from the bleak disorder of urban architecture. Here, the provocation is perhaps softer, more understated, unfolding through a play of allusions and references that are not always explicit. The “birth of an asparagus”—thrust into the foreground of the canvas like a headline on the front page of a newspaper—transcends its static, descriptive magic (which might otherwise seem an end in itself) to offer a subtle satire on humanity’s frenetic pursuit—of what, exactly?—causing us to lose sight of the simplicity and perfection of nature as it renews itself according to orderly, inexorable laws: whether in the sprouting of an asparagus, the falling of autumn leaves, or the precise geometry of a starry sky.”
The same coherence resides in both the birth of an asparagus and the black cube.

(Daniele Cavicchia, text from the catalogue for the installation “Il grande firmamento” at the Ex Gaslini in Pescara, August 1995).

The exhibition “Sandro Visca: 1974–1994” runs from October 21 to November 4 at the Palazzo Ducale, in the Sala del Diritto Comune of the University of Camerino. It features nearly one hundred works, including tapestries, mixed-media paintings on canvas, and sculptures. The exhibition catalogue includes texts by Lucio Fraccacreta, Enrico Crispolti, Tito Spini, and Ruggero Pierantoni.

It must be said right away that every man would like to have the look of the mature Sean Connery—the very look that Sandro Visca carries with him, calmly and serenely. But I, in particular, would like to live within the clean, attentive, and rigorous order of the studio where he draws, thinks, and shapes his works. It is an order that stands in stark contrast to the chaotic, pseudo-creative frenzies of so many manic, phony studios—and to that depressing, disheartening ideology of creation at any cost. A type of creation that is supposedly meant to spring from cluttered rooms, littered floors, and walls smeared with pointless “creative” marks. The space surrounding Visca is simple and clear; his tools are cherished, protected, and arranged in their own inevitable hierarchy. It is an order that establishes a form of aristocracy: the noblest tool is the one currently in greatest use. And, as such, it discreetly holds sway over the others. While waiting to give way to needle, thread, and leather, the pencil sits in its rightful place. Later on, the dominant role of the gouge, the burin, or the drill will once again—with functional precision—alter this fluid social ladder of tools. I do not know if Visca would appreciate the comparison, but his studio—in its intricate details—strongly reminded me of a vast garage in the far north of Canada, where a young woman lived, seemingly alone. We had stopped there due to a breakdown in our camper. She kept all her tools in immaculate order—every type of screwdriver, drill, and level… She reminded me of Calypso, who brought Odysseus—sitting in despair on the shore—all the necessary tools she evidently possessed and kept safe; a solitary goddess at the boundary between the human and divine worlds.
I find myself wondering now what kind of motionless journey Sandro Visca is preparing for from this command deck—so geometric, uniformly bright, and authentically inhabited. And since journeys require maps and paths, it seems to me that these three rooms serve as the setting for evoking and representing worlds to be visited rather than conquered—worlds to be loved rather than possessed. I have become convinced that this is about journeys and maps, even if my conviction might not align with Visca’s own intentions. Yet, the idea of the journey powerfully embodies the very possibility of living—and the gentle, confident belief that it is worth setting out. That it is worth pursuing signs, currents, and mountain silhouettes. And if it is worth doing that, then it means that life itself is worth living.

Another pleasing aspect of Visca is the calm awareness that, while things could be infinitely better, there is no point in shouting, thrashing about, getting agitated, or casting meaningful glances heavy with “indignation.”
The task he has set for himself is to chart—for himself and for others—lines of escape and emergency exits; to open doors and windows that have too often been left shut; to layer cheerful, positive adjectives upon other cheerful, positive adjectives; and to carefully trace the contour lines of a country that exists only in dreams. It is a matter of moving—heroically, in a sense—with calm and silence, revealing (without ostentation) the infinite combinations of happiness. A meticulous and deeply engaged explorer of South America’s geographical and human realities, he knows full well the words Atahualpa Yupanqui sang in his desolate “Camino del indio”: Caminantes, no hay caminos, se hace camino al andar (“Travelers, there are no paths; the path is made by walking”). Thus, his routes, maps, and graphic and sculptural works contain moments of discouragement, sudden sadness, and details both atrocious and minuscule (Borges’s “minuscule ignominies”). Just as the multicolored, sun-drenched pages of Márquez hold moments of despair, foretold suicides, and deathly silences, so too—amidst stars, whimsical bronze asparagus stalks, and typographic lightning bolts—one encounters a lost bird, a hooked claw, or a fire that consumes only itself. In Map and Mirror, Sir Ernest Gombrich describes the complex cultural phenomenology of the map, recognizing it as a hybrid form suspended between the alphabet, painting, poetry, and “simple” representation. Thus, swamps are drawn as marshes filled with weeds; forests appear as dense clusters of trees packed so tightly together that the ground is hidden from view; and stylized cities are represented by a bell tower, a bridge, or a gateway. Sometimes you even encounter a shadow, a river’s reflection, or the ajar gate of a vegetable garden. Yet, alongside these, you find the number, the measurement, the scale, and the name.
Consistently, Visca’s maps possess the quality of a text written in a simple, clear alphabet using only a few symbols. By repeatedly examining the images he has painted, etched, stitched, cast, and embroidered (for Visca embroiders, too), I have counted around twenty-four hieroglyphs. It seems to me that he writes using twenty-four symbols. They suffice for him. They suffice for me. I will not list them all here, but they are so pleasing and so recognizable—and it is such a delight to encounter them again and again across different images, to recognize them in their constant metamorphosis—that one feels inclined to compile a sort of ultra-brief dictionary, or perhaps a vocabulary.
Angle: sometimes it looks exactly like the Angle—the one found in middle-school geometry textbooks—complete with that neat little arc marking the vertex. At other times, it emerges from a circular arc; yet, if you gaze at it, that shape increasingly becomes just an “arc,” causing Elementary Geometry to dissolve and vanish, finally allowing the arrow to take flight. Yet, without warning, the Angle can easily transform into a sail—set at a slight tilt—upon a sea that would have pleased both Klee and Euclid.
Lightning bolt: this is the typographic lightning bolt. It is the quintessential bolt with zigzagging sides and a sharp tip plunging into the sea—the lightning bolt of childhood drawings and comic-book heroes, the lightning bolt of weather forecasts. At times it descends from undulating clouds—cleverly stepped in shades born of blue—while at other times it rises from below, emerging from chimneys or drifting away from schematic, “lightning-bolt” flowers. It may be pink, bronze, or black, or simply made of air—cut out like a negative from the parent cloud, as in… “Little Storms”.
Asparagus: unequivocally a fruit-and-vegetable specimen. Those exegetes who strive to imbue it with phallic-Freudian connotations will have to reckon with its absolute, immaculate vegetal nature—the brownish-green hue of its tiny leaves, its dazzling stalk, its russet and violet tip. Yet it appears sometimes alone, sometimes in a cluster with its brethren—some a bit barbaric, clad in leathery scales like one of D’Annunzio’s cataphracts. Others appear woody or Germanic, or glide sinuously like their own reflections upon the oily waters of a harbor. They seem impassive and silent, almost arrogant. Yet one encounters some that feel a powerful pull toward a distant bronze star and stretch out toward it, emerging obliquely and inquisitively from beneath a blanket of mathematical waves. One meets a veritable clan of them in “Asparagi,” but in the “Garden of Forbidden Fruits,” the asparagus is the King (on the chessboard). These plant-like creatures—so archaic and elemental, yet delicious to eat—remind me of the anecdote recounted by Brillat-Savarin in his Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy. It tells of a good-natured prank played on a Canon who took immense pride in the asparagus he cultivated in the garden behind his church. Under the cover of darkness, friends would harvest the real asparagus and replace it with a crop of well-carved, realistically painted fakes, which they would make appear to “grow” night after night—leading up to a final, mocking banquet of wood. The real stalks, meanwhile, had already been savored at a separate, private feast to which the Canon was not invited…
Spiral: whether right-handed or left-handed, slender or rendered in a baroque style with a multitude of marks and colours, it stands alone or alongside its sisters. It may emerge from a sort of chimney—or perhaps the conical spire of a French château—anchored by a small grip, a hidden hand holding it in place.
Keeping it from flying away. Yet at other times, it is the path of the Uccellino (Little Bird—see entry) itself that trails the spiral along, weaving it into the racemes and interlacings of a calligraphic, dutifully schooled memory.
Uccellino (Little Bird): this is perhaps the only living creature—though a near-constant presence—in Visca’s maps. It is a small bird that sits somewhere between a partridge and a quail, between a magpie and the melancholy hen—the one that, to put it simply, “returns to the road…” once the rain has stopped. Sometimes it multiplies into a flock aiming for a heroic, one-way exodus, or returning after yet another migration. At other times, it appears curious and solitary, half-hidden amidst the greenery. …scalloped by a meadow of openwork embroidery (though somewhat cruel in its blades of grass), it waits for the hunter to let his guard down. Yet the next time it has landed—dead, perhaps, killed by a ruse in the ambush of a bronze disc suspended on four gleaming claws. Like the “Hunter” in García Lorca’s poem, where “four doves move through the air, flying and bearing their four shadows”—shadows already dead. What it represents to its creator or companion, I do not know. But from this creature—defenseless yet indestructible, fearful yet fearless—there emanates a steadfast will to survive, to see, to understand, and simply to “be,” a quality I would not trade for the eagle, the pelican, or the Phoenix.
Star: it is almost invariably pentagonal and lacks stellar symmetry; somewhat misshapen, with unequal rays, tossed there by chance—an option of astronomical Creation. More graphic and childlike than scientific or celestial, it establishes around itself a gentle yet inexorable gravitational field that draws in coloured dots, wisps of smoke, and the hopeful heads of… asparagus and other stars.
This dictionary—this vocabulary of Visca’s individual signs—could go on and on; it gives me pleasure to recall them after having isolated them from their world, having “pulled them down” and arranged them in a non-alphabetical order.
What moves and captivates us are almost always the invisible forces at play between these symbols, between these words. A star leans toward an asparagus stalk; a spiral stirs up an intense green wind among a cluster of asparagus stalks that sway with the breeze—stalks that, were they not rooted in the ground, would all be floating in mid-air right now. A star—perhaps a starfish (or maybe just the reflection of a star)—floats upon a bronze wave; nearby stands a form that is sharp yet rounded, glossy yet not hard, alluding to the depths of that sea. It hints at the perils, but also the wonders, of navigation.
Yet there is another curious presence here—one that is concealed, rendered transparent by its own self-irony. Here and there, one encounters curious forms of perspective: certain tables sketch it out in one corner, only to promptly forget it in the next. At times, a pedestal begins to articulate—with a precision that is both childlike and academic—the names of its moldings: gola roversa (ogee), listello (fillet), scozia (scotia), toro (torus)… but then it stops there, perplexed, mid-sign. Elsewhere, one sees windows—openings in a skewed cube that would have delighted Pavel Florensky, seeing his “Inverted Perspective” still enjoying a rare but steadfast fortune among us non-believers. Underlying this, in my view, is the School—and what Visca thinks of it. I was surprised, while listening to him, to note that—unlike almost every other high school teacher I have ever met—he never spoke ill of the school. To be sure, he would smile into his beard, showing understanding for the infinite frailties of that fragile creature of ours—School—which always seems on the verge of drowning. At that moment—though this is merely my own fanciful interpretation—the Little Bird seemed to me to embody the School itself: lying low to avoid being shot, made cunning and swift to avoid capture, alert and patient to avoid ending up in the oven. Constantly on the brink of extinction, yet never vanishing from the atlas. Sandro Visca did not slide down that almost inevitable slope of reviling the School, of condemning it or making it a target for scorn. The few references to the draftsman’s craft, the sparing mention of perspective, the awkward yet pompous profiles of vaguely architectural pedestals, a faint memory of institutional colour contrasts—all of this led me to imagine Visca as a patient, ironic, and kind teacher. The sort of person whom, if you ran into him twenty years later on the street, would prompt you to put your foot down from your bicycle and ask: “So, have the asparagus grown?”

(Ruggero Pierantoni, “Un alfabeto di ventiquattro segni” [An Alphabet of Twenty-Four Signs], text in the catalogue for the solo exhibition “Sandro Visca” 1974–1994, held at the Sala del Diritto Comune in the Palazzo Ducale of the University of Camerino, October 21 – November 4, 1995).

– From December 22, 1995, to February 18, 1996, he was invited to participate in the exhibition “Lupo: dall’Abruzzo all’immaginario” [Wolf: From Abruzzo to the Imaginary] at the Salone delle Fontane in Rome’s EUR district. He exhibited “Attendere serenamente fuori della tana del lupo” [Waiting Serenely Outside the Wolf’s Den] (painted collage and sewn hides, 57×77 cm).

The exhibition was curated by Alessandro Mendini.

1996
– In June, Sandro Visca was invited to the exhibition “Spazio dell’800-900 in Abruzzo” [Space of the 19th and 20th Centuries in Abruzzo] at the Sala Michetti of the Abruzzo Regional Council in L’Aquila. He exhibited “Sogno di un paesaggio di mare” [Dream of a Seascape] (sewn tapestry, 155×195 cm).

– He was represented by the work “Nascita di un asparago” [Birth of an Asparagus] (sculpture in semi-refractory biscuit-fired clay; the upper section is glazed and accented with gold; firings: 1 [980°C], 2 [900°C], 3 [750°C]; height 61 cm – base diameter 12 cm) at the exhibition “Raccolta Internazionale d’Arte Ceramica Contemporanea” [International Collection of Contemporary Ceramic Art] at the Regional Museum of the F.A. Grue Art Institute in Castelli. The catalogue features texts by Enzo Biffi Gentili and Eduardo Alamaro.

– From December 1996 to January 1997, the retrospective exhibition Sandro Visca: Vessilli d’amore (Banners of Love) was held at the Experimental Museum of Contemporary Art in L’Aquila.

It features around one hundred works, including stitched tapestries, mixed-media painted canvases, painted and stitched cardboard pieces, mixed-material structures, fabric sculptures, and small-scale bronze and iron sculptures. The catalogue includes texts by Nicola Ciarletta, Benito Sablone, Lucio Fraccacreta, Gino Marotta, Diego Carpitella, Enrico Crispolti, Tito Spini, and Ruggero Pierantoni.

1997
– Visca is invited to the “Teatrarte novantasette” exhibition at the Teatro D’Annunzio in Pescara. He exhibits Attendere serenamente fuori della tana del lupo (painted collage and stitched hides, 57×77 cm). The exhibition is curated by Nicoletta Di Gregorio. July 9 – August 18.

That same year, Visca—along with Edoardo Caroccia and a small group of friends—helps found the cultural association “Gli alianti” (The Gliders), for which he designs the logo. As its first initiative in 1998, the association successfully organizes a major retrospective of Andrea Pazienza’s work at the Pescara Central Station Gallery. The accompanying monograph, Andrea Pazienza (published by Baldini & Castoldi), is edited by Vincenzo Mollica, Michele Pazienza, and Mariella Pazienza. April 25 – June 21.

Also at the Pescara Central Station Gallery, another major retrospective—this time dedicated to Tanino Liberatore—follows in 1999. The monograph Liberatore: Da Quadri a Parigi, Disegni e illustrazioni 1975–1999 was published by 3ntini & C.

An exhibition of works by Milo Manara opened in 2000. The catalogue was produced by Edizioni Gli Alianti.

In 2001, a highly successful retrospective of Pino Zac’s work was held at the Forte Spagnolo in L’Aquila; it was subsequently restaged the following January at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. The catalogue, titled Pino Zac, was published by Edizioni Gli Alianti.

1998
Driven by a keen interest in human history and the relationship between people, place, and local customs, Sandro Visca set out in 1998 with Venezuelan friends Fausto Giannangeli Rosa, Silvia and Mirna Parra, and José Luis Padilla. Starting from Puerto La Cruz, they traversed the Venezuelan Gran Sabana—traveling from Canaima to Roraima—and covered a two-thousand-kilometer route by Jeep that took them all the way to Brazil.

The following summer, in North Africa, he drove a Jeep across fifteen hundred kilometers of the Tunisian desert, passing through oases and key landmarks along the way.

These arduous journeys—where physical exertion and hardship are integral, almost philosophical elements of the experience—revealed not only the pleasure of the naturalist traveler in him but also a passion for photography. For Visca is also a highly skilled photographer; while it is certainly a hobby, he—reserved as ever—shies away from acclaim and does not seek recognition for this talent.

– From October 9 to 12, he exhibits “Paesaggio” (stitched tapestry, 170×230 cm) and “Asparago” (tapestry woven on the loom of Paola Pia of Civitella Alfedena) at the “Abitare il tempo” exhibition—part of the experimental and research-focused “Riprogettare il passato” (Redesigning the Past) showcase—in Verona. The catalogue features a text by Mariano Apa.

– From October 31 to November 15, the State Art Institute of L’Aquila invites him to the “40th Anniversary of the State Art Institute” exhibition at the Forte Spagnolo in L’Aquila. He exhibits “La grande montagna” (stitched fabrics and leathers, 100×150 cm).

– On December 20, the exhibition “Museum and Archive of Contemporary Abruzzese Artists” (permanent collection) opens at the Medieval Castle of Nocciano. He exhibits “Voli misteriosi sulla montagna” (stitched fabrics and leathers, 100×100 cm). The exhibition is curated by Eugenio Riccitelli.

1999
– Visca, alongside other artists such as Carla Accardi, Bruno Ceccobelli, Peter Flaccus, Gino Marotta, and Egon Wostemeier, participates in the exhibition “Annodo” (Contemporary Kilims) at the Cloister of San Salvatore in Lauro in Rome. He exhibits “Preghiera” (Kilim rug, 143×172 cm; weaver: Mali Ha Talasli; dyer: Mehmet Tosunyalin). The exhibition is curated by Giovanna Odorisio.

– The exhibition “Artisti & Venti 1944–1999” (Artists & Winds 1944–1999)—a showcase of modern and contemporary art—opens at the Forte Spagnolo in L’Aquila, running from July 18 to August 8. The work Paesaggio estivo (Summer Landscape; sewn fabrics, 150 × 50 cm) is on display. The exhibition is curated by Antonio Gasbarrini.

– Visca is invited to participate in the “Epicaforma” national exhibition at the Columbus Centre in Toronto, Canada. He exhibits Prima della tempesta (mixed-media painting on canvas, 50×70 cm) and Tramonto estivo (mixed-media painting on canvas, 50×70 cm). The exhibition is curated by Mariano Apa.

– From August 14 to September 26, the exhibition “Alitalia per l’Arte” (Alitalia for Art)—titled Artists for the 705th Perdonanza Celestiniana—opens at the Forte Spagnolo in L’Aquila. He exhibits Fuochi sulla montagna (stitched fabrics, leathers, and twine, 100×150 cm). The exhibition is curated by Massimo Duranti.

– On September 5, Visca is invited by the University of Camerino to the 12th Camerino–Noordwijkerhout Symposium, “Receptor Chemistry Towards the Third Millennium.” He exhibits Piccolo paesaggio (stitched leathers and fabrics, 50×50 cm).

– On December 28, he is invited to the exhibition “Quei giovani amici pittori” (Those Young Painter Friends)—Art Chronicles 1970–1978—at Casa Rosato in Lanciano. He exhibits Sotto il gomitolo bianco (stitched tapestry, 168×255 cm). The exhibition is curated by Giuseppe Rosato.

– In December 1999, Alessandro Clementi presents the volume Sandro Visca: Abruzzi, l’arte del far cucina (Abruzzo: The Art of Cooking)—published by G.T.E. of L’Aquila—at the Sala Rossa of Palazzo Centi in L’Aquila. The volume was sponsored by Abruzzo Promozione Turismo of Pescara.

“It is heartening to see a book like L’arte del far cucina (The Art of Cooking) by Sandro Visca released under the banner of Abruzzo Promozione Turismo—a book that finally presents a refined, almost aristocratic side of our region, one in keeping with our traditions of restraint and elegance, far removed from opulence and waste. Written, illustrated, and graphically designed by the author, and meticulously printed by G.T.E. of L’Aquila, the volume embodies the qualities of an artist who combines creative talent with exceptional technical expertise.
To call this merely a cookbook would be an oversimplification; indeed, the title itself seems intended to dispel such a misconception: The Art of Cooking. It is, precisely, the art of ‘cooking’—but it is also something more.
As the author states in the introduction: ‘One aspect of a dish that has always intrigued me is its alchemical component: one ingredient, plus another, plus yet another, can come together to create a delicacy, a true treat… What a wonderful moment it is when, faced with a dish worthy of appreciation, all our senses vie for attention: sight and smell, taste, touch, and hearing.’ It is in this spirit that the culinary guidelines are presented; while they retain the basic structure of a ‘recipe,’ their true aim is to steer the reader toward choices that are refined and deeply cultured, however simple they may appear. I particularly appreciated the philological rigor applied to the text; after all, philology is not merely the study of words, but a method of inquiry—a modus operandi—that can be applied to any field.” The precision of the terminology and the exactness with which the topics are presented sometimes hint at a subtle vein of irony—as seen in the recipe for misticanza (p. 144), which lists six herbs like a rhythmic chant: curly lettuce, lamb’s lettuce, wall lettuce, purslane, wild arugula, and poppy, all to be dressed with salt, extra-virgin olive oil, and raspberry vinegar.
Similarly, the recipe for Snails in Tomato Sauce (p. 70) takes on a fairytale quality: for four days, they “must remain confined in a large container covered with fine-mesh netting to prevent their escape. On the first day, feed them only fresh baby lettuce, while for the remaining three days, use wheat bran…” Yet this is not merely a written text; it is, above all, a beautifully illustrated book. From the page borders and drop caps to the varied depictions of objects, animals, landscapes, herbs, and flowers, the author’s imagination takes flight—joyful yet always measured.
We learned from Dante that the art of illumination—known in Paris as enluminure (literally “lighting up”)—made the pages “smile”: a light and a smile I rediscover in this delightful book, which vindicates paper from the indignities to which poor publishing practices often subject it.

(Anna Ventura, “When Cooking Is Art and a Master Speaks of It,” Il Messaggero, L’Aquila, February 11, 2000, p. VIII).

2000
– From February 26 to March 31, the Visca exhibition In itinere runs at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Palazzo Ricci, in Macerata. The work In itinere (a sewn tapestry, 34 × 0.50 m) is exhibited. The exhibition is curated by Paola Ballesi.

“I do not believe,” writes Crispolti, “that the motivational origin of Visca’s interest in tapestry is of an avant-garde nature”; yet it is easy to see how it grafts itself onto a significant vein of contemporary art research. This encompasses both the revival of the traditional poetics of textiles—exemplified by artists ranging from Cagli to Boetti—and various experimental approaches, from Depero to Baj, extending to the more recent work of Ghada Amer or Louise Bourgeois. In all its varied manifestations, this work aims to highlight the artistic value—with its strong communicative and social resonance—that textile material possesses the magical power to convey and translate.
Indeed, the motivation driving Sandro Visca toward this ancient practice is itself ancient and ancestral; it stems from a familiarity with his own roots and a clear desire to pursue an inquiry at the boundary between ontogeny and phylogeny. This inquiry seeks to stitch together fragments of memory and history, reconstructing the fabric of life—a complex interweaving of lived experience and ethos—into a sequence of images presented to the viewer as an imaginative vision, yet also as a textural, epiphanic film of reality in the continuity of its relentless unfolding.
It is these artistic artifacts—once considered minor or secondary to the so-called “major arts”—that most generously reveal the profound impulses driving the historical evolution of culture. At its inception, this evolution was dictated simply by the gesture that creates forms and produces images—gestures not yet mediated by conscious deliberation, but spontaneous and pristine, drawing directly from the source of productive and creative making. This making is fundamental to the existential status of man, who is engaged—as Heidegger suggests—in “building, dwelling, …thinking.”
Alois Riegl, a leading figure of the “Vienna School,” identifies in them the fundamental traits of Kunstwollen—the artistic will that is inextricably linked to one’s worldview—and, in Alt-orientalische Teppiche (1891), lays the groundwork for a scientific approach to studying an artifact that is as ancient as it is rich in cultural significance: the carpet—an extremely broad term encompassing both floor coverings and wall hangings.
These correspond to two distinct techniques: tapestry weaving (Wirkerey) for wall hangings, and knotting for floor carpets. The former is the more primitive technique and, in all likelihood, the oldest form of weaving in existence. Used “to cover, to protect, to enclose,” these primordial woven products served—as Gottfried Semper notes in his masterful study Die textile Kunst (1878)—both to clothe the body and to erect temporary barriers against the outside world, thereby creating an enclosed living space.
“This latter purpose,” Riegl continues, “was achieved in the simplest way by hanging tapestry-woven cloths at a certain height above the ground—either draped like a tent over a single pole or arranged like a hut over two, three, four, or more poles.”
Thus, tapestry weaving emerged from the primitive technique of mat-weaving and spread across all ancient civilizations, with its products shaping both Western and Eastern cultures—from the Inca of Peru to the Egyptians, the peoples of India, and beyond.
After reaching its peak development during Late Antiquity and the medieval period, this ancient technique—the starting point for… Western Gobelin-style weaving had already spread throughout Central Europe—from France and the Netherlands to Germany—where it was practiced as a profession, whereas in other European countries it long remained the province of rural cottage industry.
In Italy, these two lines of development appear to have coexisted; indeed, as Riegl wrote in the aforementioned 1891 text: “Even today—nearly four centuries after Raphael—we find the production of striped, colourful fabrics flourishing within rural cottage industry in the area around Macerata… a legacy from the distant past.”
It is within the context of this observation regarding the textile activity of the Macerata province a century ago that we should view the event promoted by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio della Provincia di Macerata. Through its exhibition of tapestries by Sandro Visca, the Foundation has once again highlighted a key aspect of its institutional mission: acting as a sensitive, discerning observer of the art world—attuned both to stylistic phenomena and the zeitgeist.
In the landscape of contemporary artistic inquiry, Sandro Visca’s work stands out as a particularly significant variant. It offers a strategically precise reflection of the current art system—characterized by the widespread dissemination and consumption of artistic products—by reclaiming the artwork’s original communicative essence; while conveying a message of profound aesthetic and ethical value, the work is nonetheless accessible among the most commonplace consumer objects. By stitching together a vast array of diverse materials—ranging from the heterogeneous to the representational—and focusing on specific recurring or emblematic images, he constructs a sort of metonymic glossary. This collection comprises imaginative artifacts and traces of memory that mark the passage of life along a path layered with iconic sediments; the artist gathers and translates these elements using a highly personal code of striking forms, heraldic ciphers, emblems, and symbols, all orchestrated through a subtle vein of irony.
In doing so, he seeks to trace that frontier where humanity’s encounter with the world has always—and inexorably—taken place. This is the origin of the creative act that gives meaning to existence and articulates reality through symbolic markers entrusted to artistic practice—a practice that, for Visca, always serves the image’s representational power, even in its most refined and seemingly gratuitous moments. This approach asserts the autonomy of his artistic gesture vis-à-vis that of Burri—whose influence during his early years nonetheless remains an undeniably significant milestone in his development.
Yet, through his “stitched” marks, Visca also pauses—with both meticulousness and patience—to describe the wandering of the dissociated mark before it coalesces into form and configuration, before it acquires the status of an image. It is a process that draws upon the enchanted source of primal feeling to fuel a slow evolution—stitch by stitch—toward the creation of a fabric. This fabric serves as the backdrop against which a potential form, a fleeting idea, or an urgent impulse—at once representational and imaginative—can stand out; it acts as a metaphor for the far broader phylogenetic process that has defined the arduous, slow, and wandering history of humankind. In initiating the processing and collection of these experiential findings, which culminated in the construction… …of “mental objects” stored in memory as substitutes for experience itself, he adapts the technical strategies of embroidery to translate—into a system of signs stitched and anchored within the fabric, often humbly following the compelling logic of warp and weft—configurations and forms that appear naive yet possess profound symbolic value; these are simplified iconic codes, heavy with lived experience and imbued with ethos, which he has the dowsing-like gift to unearth, gather, and present in this unfolding manner.
The large tapestry unfurled across the walls of the Galleria Galeotti in Macerata stands as an extraordinary example of Visca’s work—a synthesis that, while taking stock of his artistic inquiry, also reveals an intent that runs obliquely to his immediate artistic purpose. This intent is manifested by projecting the high-tech world into a unique temporal realm—one rendered strange and suspended within the slow pace of artisanal craft, where intervals and pauses are prioritized to preserve a speed that is less mental than empathic: the lightning-fast trajectory of intuition, which captures and connects distant points in space and time—a domain that has always been the artist’s undisputed territory and private niche, where it is easier to bring to light the kaleidoscopic machinery of the imagination. Yet the artist does not invent forms arbitrarily; rather, he renders them recognizable by drawing upon a repertoire of images—such as those Sandro Visca retrieves and expresses through his own unmistakable idiolect in his sewn works, tapestries, and embroideries. These works feature both abstract compositions and narrative inserts, characterized by an interplay of intensely warm, sun-drenched colours and others that are equally pure yet nocturnal in their coolness. They also display soft, yielding configurations—reminiscent of organic, living matter—which serve as a subtle yet essential medium for weaving and capturing, within the infinite sequence of imaginative representation, specific symbolic “frames.” These frames stand out here in this unique storyboard, which jealously guards the secret meaning of life—a meaning inscribed through the indelible marks of human labor in partnership with the world.

(Paola Ballesi, “In itinere,” text from the catalogue for the solo exhibition at Palazzo Ricci, Macerata, February 26 – March 31, 2000).

– Visca participates in the exhibition “Annodo” (Contemporary Kilims) at Studio Calia in Matera, alongside Carla Accardi, Bruno Ceccobelli, Peter Flaccus, Gino Marotta, and Egon Wostemeier. The exhibition is curated by Giovanna Odorisio. May 6–15.

– Visca’s exhibition “In itinere” opens at the Chiesa del Suffragio in Corinaldo, running from May 28 to June 28. He exhibits the work In itinere (a sewn tapestry measuring 34 × 0.50 m). The exhibition is curated by Margherita Abbo.

– From September 9 to October 1, Visca presents a repeat showing of the exhibition “In itinere” at the Forte Spagnolo in L’Aquila. He exhibits “In itinere” (stitched tapestry, 34 × 0.50 m). The exhibition is curated by the cultural association “Un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso.”

– Visca is invited to the 2000 Annual Art Exhibition “Lo scandalo dello spirito” (The Scandal of the Spirit)—contemporary art dedicated to Celestine V—at the Forte Spagnolo in L’Aquila. He exhibits “Ripostiglio estivo” (stitched hides and fabrics, 80 × 150 cm), “Ripostiglio segreto” (stitched fabrics, 80 × 150 cm), “Fuochi sulla montagna” (stitched fabrics, hides, and twine, 100 × 150 cm), and “La grande montagna” (stitched fabrics and hides, 100 × 150 cm). The exhibition is curated by Enrico Sconci. August 27 – September 25.

– From September 1 to 15, he participates in the “World Festival of Art on Paper” exhibition in Kranj, Slovenia. He exhibits “La città degli asparagi” (watercolor on Fabriano paper, 76 × 57 cm) and “Paesaggio di mare” (watercolor on Fabriano paper, 76 × 57 cm). The exhibition catalogue features texts by Berislav Valusek.

– From December 20, 2000, to January 31, 2001, Visca participates in the exhibition “Natività in ceramica” (Ceramic Nativities) at the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli – Castelli Ceramics Museum. The work on display is “Nascita di una stella” (majolica-glazed refractory clay and third-fire gold, 36x6x48 cm). The exhibition is curated by Antonello Rubini.

2001
– From March 3 to April 1, Visca’s exhibition In itinere opens at the Officina Cultural Centre in Lucca. He exhibits In itinere (stitched tapestry, 34 × 0.50 m). The exhibition is curated by Emy Petrini. In conjunction with this show, a lecture on the stitched tapestry In itinere is held at the Academy of Fine Arts in Pisa, along with two workshops for young people at the Officina Cultural Centre.

– From July 21 to September 10, he is invited to participate in “Column’art 2001,” an exhibition of painters, sculptors, and ceramicists from Abruzzo, held at Palazzo Pardi in Colonnella. He exhibits La porta dei sogni (mixed media, 50 × 50 cm), Piccolo paesaggio in posa (mixed media, 50 × 50 cm), and Tempesta sulla montagna (mixed media, 50 × 50 cm). The exhibition is curated by the Teramo Artists’ Association.

– From December 16 to January 6, 2002, Visca is invited to the “Mail Art” International Exhibition at the Civic Gallery of Contemporary Art in Termoli. The exhibition is curated by the “Il Campo” Cultural Centre of Campomarino.

– On December 18, Visca participates in the contemporary art exhibition “Natale per i Palestinesi… Pasqua in Palestina” (Christmas for Palestinians… Easter in Palestine)—an international solidarity event involving the Land Research Centre in Jerusalem—held at the Experimental Museum of Contemporary Art in L’Aquila.

2002
– In June, Visca is invited to the exhibition “Tracciati d’Arte in Abruzzo – Un’esplorazione di vicende e tendenze” [Artistic Paths in Abruzzo – An Exploration of Events and Trends] at the Sala G. Trevisan in Giulianova.

He exhibits “Il teatrino del Martin Pescatore” [The Kingfisher’s Little Theatre] (mixed media, sewn fabrics, and gold leaf; 50×55 cm). The exhibition is curated by Carlo Fabrizio Carli.

– In July, Visca is invited to the “Parco Maiella” National Prize for Nature Literature in Abbateggio. He participates with the volume Abruzzi, L’Arte del far cucina [Abruzzo: The Art of Cooking] and is awarded 3rd Prize in the “Published Non-fiction” category named after Paolo Barrasso. The competition is promoted by the Abbateggio Pro Loco in collaboration with the Columbus Centre in Toronto, Canada.

– From July 27 to October 13, he is invited to the 35th Vasto Prize exhibition, Il secondo novecento in Italia, Riferimenti forti [The Second Half of the 20th Century in Italy: Strong Points of Reference], held at the Civic Museums in Palazzo Davalos, Vasto. He exhibits “Il teatrino dei fiori” [The Little Theatre of Flowers] (mixed media and gold leaf; 50×55 cm), “Caduta di un teatrino” [Fall of a Little Theatre] (mixed media and gold leaf; 50×55 cm), “Il teatrino dell’amore” [The Little Theatre of Love] (mixed media and gold leaf; 50×55 cm), and “Salvataggio” [Rescue] (mixed media and gold leaf; 50×50 cm). The exhibition is curated by Enrico Crispolti.

– From December 8 to January 7, Visca is invited to the exhibition “Viaggio per” [Journey Through/To]… …terra” [Earth], Eleven Sculptors in Castelli. An international ceramics workshop held on Salita Paradiso in Castelli. He exhibits Nascita di un asparago rosso [Birth of a Red Asparagus] (majolica-glazed refractory clay and third-fire gold; height 260 cm, base diameter 40 cm). The exhibition is curated by Antonello Rubini.

– In December, he is invited to the exhibition “01 Arte Contemporanea Internazionale” [01 International Contemporary Art] at Vox Ecomunicazioni in Rome. He exhibits Paesaggio pericoloso [Dangerous Landscape] (stitched watercolor, 50×40 cm). The exhibition is curated by Stefano Marotta.

2003
– Sandro Visca, together with Giuseppe Fiducia, is invited to a traveling exhibition in the USA and Canada: Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington, Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. The exhibition is promoted by the Presidency of the Regional Executive Board of the Abruzzo Region. He exhibits Paesaggio invernale [Winter Landscape] (stitched leather and fabric, 50×50 cm), Paesaggio di tempesta [Storm Landscape] (stitched leather and fabric, 50×50 cm), and Montagna di fuoco [Mountain of Fire] (stitched leather and fabric, 50×50 cm). The texts in the exhibition brochure are by Maria Cristina Ricciardi. February/March.

– On the occasion of the presentation of the volume Vicende, testimonianze e contesto di una esperienza italiana – Liceo Artistico “G. [Events, Testimonies, and Context of an Italian Experience – “G.” Art High School] …Misticoni” since 1947” by Antonio Zimarino, Visca participates in the exhibition “Immagini di una esperienza” (Images of an Experience) at the Spazio per le Arti – SPARTS in Pescara. He exhibits “Stellario” (stitched fabrics, 125×150 cm) and “Il teatrino del martin pescatore” (mixed media, stitched fabrics and gold leaf, 50×55 cm). The exhibition is curated by Piera Di Nicolantonio.

– On June 3, he is invited to the exhibition “Futuro remoto” (Remote Future) – The Art of Matter from Antiquity to the Contemporary – at Palazzo Dorotea in Villetta Barrea. He exhibits “Rosso di paesaggio” (stitched fabrics, 70×50 cm).

– In July, the Municipality of Ofena is presenting Visca’s solo exhibition “Teatrini,” curated by Antonello Rubini. Exhibits “Stellario” (stitched fabrics, 125×150 cm), “Teatrino notturno” (stitched fabrics, 50×50 cm), “Tempesta sulla montagna” (collage and stitched papers, 50×50 cm), “Teatrino pericolante” (mixed media, 50×50 cm), “Il teatrino dell’amore” (mixed media and gold leaf, 50×55 cm), “Il teatrino dei fiori” (mixed media, fabrics, and gold leaf, 50×55 cm), “Caduta di un teatrino” (mixed media, fabrics, and gold leaf, 50×55 cm), “Teatrino orientale” (mixed media, stitched fabrics, and gold leaf, 50×55 cm), “Asparago in posa” (teatrino) (mixed media and stitched fabrics, 65×49 cm), “Il teatrino del martin pescatore” (mixed media, stitched fabrics, and gold leaf, 50×55 cm), “L’imprudenza del martin pescatore” (teatrino) (mixed media, tempera, and gold leaf, 65×50 cm), “L’istrionismo del guitto” (teatrino) (mixed media, tempera, and gold leaf, 65×50 cm), “Ripostigli segreti” (teatrino) (mixed media and stitched fabrics, 65×49 cm), “Quando volano le comete” (teatrino) (mixed media, stitched fabrics, and gold leaf, 65×50 cm), “Personaggio teatrante” (teatrino) (mixed media and stitched fabrics, 70×50 cm), “Fall of a Character” (miniature stage) (stitched fabrics and leathers, 70×58 cm), “Spectacularity of the Performer” (miniature stage) (mixed media and stitched fabrics, 63×43 cm), “Behind the Footlights” (miniature stage) (mixed media, fabrics, and gold leaf, 65×48 cm), “Capitulation of a Character” (miniature stage) (mixed media and stitched papers, 70×50 cm), “Fall of Theatricality” (miniature stage) (mixed media, fabrics, and stitched papers, 70×50 cm), “Last-Ditch Rescue” (miniature stage) (mixed media, fabrics, and stitched papers, 50×50 cm), “Winter Character” (miniature stage) (mixed media, stitched fabrics, and gold leaf, 30×138 cm), “Summer Character” (miniature stage) (mixed media, stitched fabrics, and gold leaf, 30×138 cm), “Spring Character” (miniature stage) (mixed media, stitched fabrics, and gold leaf, 30×140 cm). Additionally, six mixed-media sculptures are presented, measuring 60x40x145 cm, 60x40x155 cm, 60x40x144 cm, 60x40x134 cm, 60x40x132 cm, and 60x40x132 cm.

– On October 11, he is invited to the “Artpolis 2003” exhibition at the Church of San Silvestro in Guardiagrele. He exhibits “Golden Nocturne.” (stitched fabrics, 70×50 cm). The exhibition is curated by Veniero De Giorgi.

On October 26, he participates in the exhibition “500 Artists in the Rainbow of Angels” (500 artisti nell’arcobaleno degli angeli) – an international mail-art installation in San Giuliano di Puglia. He exhibits a small stitched cardboard piece.

2004
– From July 26 to August 7, he is invited to participate in a group exhibition at the Archaeological Space within the Teatro Sociale in Trento. He exhibits “Il teatrino dei fiori” (mixed media, fabrics and gold leaf, 50×55 cm), “Il teatrino del martin pescatore” (mixed media, stitched fabrics and gold leaf, 50×55 cm), “Il teatrino dell’amore” (mixed media and gold leaf, 50×55 cm), “Asparago in posa – teatrino” (mixed media and stitched fabrics, 65×49 cm), and “Spettacolarità dell’interprete” (mixed media, stitched fabrics, 63×43 cm). The exhibition is curated by the Teatro Stabile di Innovazione L’Uovo of L’Aquila.

– On August 18, Visca is invited to the 26th “Enrico Mattei” Contemporary Art Prize at the Mario Sinopoli multi-purpose hall in Civitella Roveto. He exhibits “Teatrino pericolante” (mixed media, 50×50 cm), “Ripostigli segreti” (mixed media and stitched fabrics, 65×49 cm), and “Quando volano le comete” (mixed media, stitched fabrics and gold leaf… …gold, 65×50 cm). The exhibition is curated by Luigi Lambertini, Carlo Fabrizio Carli, and Mariano Apa.

– On August 7, he is invited to the “Contemporary Art of Abruzzo” exhibition at the Council Chamber of the Municipality of Ofena. He exhibits Stellario (stitched fabrics, 125×150 cm) and Notturno dorato (stitched fabrics, 70×50 cm). The exhibition is curated by Antonello Rubini.

– In October, he is invited to Seoul (Korea) to participate in an exhibition paying tribute to the great poet Francesco Petrarca. He exhibits Passa la nave mia colma d’oblio per aspro mare… (stitched cardboard, 76×106 cm) and Passer mai solitario in alcun tempo non fu quant’io… (stitched cardboard, 76×106 cm). The exhibition is curated by the Italian Cultural Institute in Seoul.

– On December 15, the Municipality of Ofena commissioned Sandro Visca to devise the final and execution plans for a Via Crucis (Stations of the Cross) to be installed within the territory of Ofena, as well as to provide artistic direction for the project’s development. Visca delegated the selection of artists for the iconographic design of the 14 stations of “Itineris” to critic Antonello Rubini, who chose the following artists: Gino Marotta, Valeriano Trubbiani, Joe Tilson, Sandro Visca, Fausto Cheng, Mauro Andrea, Sergio Vacchi, Hermann Albert, Paolo Baratella, Louis Cane, Mikhail Koulakov, Giannetto Fieschi, Claudio D’Angelo, and Mauro Berrettini.

2005
– On October 15, Visca was invited to the exhibition “Le due rive” (The Two Shores)—featuring Italian and Croatian artists—held to mark the 50th anniversary of the Termoli Prize. He exhibited Giù il sipario (stitched fabrics, 100×100 cm) and Teatro safari (stitched fabrics, 100×150 cm). The exhibition was curated by Antonello Rubini and Jasminka Poklecki Stosic.

– On November 26, in Pieve di Cento, on the occasion of the inauguration of the new Museum of Art of the Italian Generations of the 20th Century (“G. Bargellini,” Visca is featured in the exhibition “Collezione generazioni anni quaranta” (Generations of the Forties Collection) with two works that will remain permanently in the museum: Il grande coleottero (The Great Beetle; wood structure, nails, fabrics, and hides; 179x130x235 cm) and Prima della tempesta (Before the Storm; mixed media on canvas; 50×70 cm). The exhibition is curated by Giorgio Di Genova.

2006
– On May 21, “Itineris: Una Via Crucis Per Ofena” (Itineris: A Stations of the Cross for Ofena) is inaugurated, based on a design and under the artistic direction of Sandro Visca. The work, consisting of fourteen stone shrines, features photo-ceramic artworks by the following artists: Gino Marotta, Valeriano Trubbiani, Joe Tilson, Sandro Visca, Fausto Cheng, Mauro Andrea, Sergio Vacchi, Hermann Albert, Paolo Baratella, Louis Cane, Mikhail Koulakov, Giannetto Fieschi, Claudio D’Angelo, and Mauro Berrettini. Technical design and the lighting system were handled by engineer Nicola Pescatore.

In May, the book Andrea Pazienza Visca is published. This 164-page volume, released by Fandango, is printed in both black-and-white and colour. Comprising drawings, comics, and hilarious stories that Andrea Pazienza—as a student—dedicated to Sandro Visca during his time at the Pescara Art High School, the book joins Pazienza’s better-known monographs such as Pentothal, Zanardi, and Pertini. According to the Pazienza archive, Visca was the living figure most frequently drawn by this genius of Italian comics.

– A Lanciano is featured in the “Arte per la vita” (Art for Life) exhibition with the work “Paesaggio d’amore” (Landscape of Love)—a 50×35 cm screenprint and collage; the exhibition is curated by Vito Bucciarelli.

– On December 13 in Rome, the Casa delle Letterature and the Fandango publishing house present the exhibition “Visca” by Andrea Pazienza. Sandro Visca and writer Emanuele Trevi are participating in the presentation. Comprising ninety-three works by Pazienza, the exhibition highlights comic stories, cartoons, and previously unseen drawings created in the early 1970s, featuring Sandro Visca—his art teacher and lifelong friend—as the central figure.

2007
– On January 18 in Rome, Visca is invited to participate in the “Sagome 547” (Silhouettes 547) exhibition, promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The “Sagome 547” exhibition is dedicated to the children who—according to the 2005 UNICEF report on the state of the world’s children—die every day due to war and terrorism. He exhibits “Sagoma” (Silhouette)—fabrics sewn and glued onto a panel, measuring 50x120x1 cm.

– On September 22, he participates in the 2007 annual exhibition “L’Aquila Città della Pace in nome di Celestino V” (L’Aquila, City of Peace in the Name of Celestine V), held at the former Monastery of Santa Maria dei Raccomandati. The exhibition is curated by Enrico Sconci.

In September, the catalogue Itineris: Una Via Crucis per Ofena (Itineris: A Stations of the Cross for Ofena)—an artistic project by Sandro Visca—is presented in Ofena. Curated by Antonello Rubini and published by Mazzotta Editore (September 2007), the catalogue includes texts by Sergio Cinquino and Monsignor… Ersilio Tonini, Sandro Visca, Nicola Pescatore, Enrico Crispolti, Antonello Rubini).

2008
– On March 29, at the Vittoria Colonna Museum of Modern Art in Pescara, the Textus publishing house presented a retrospective exhibition of Visca’s work: “Visca, Opere 1962-2008” (Visca: Works 1962–2008). (The catalogue includes an essay by Plinio Perilli and a meta-biography by Antonello Rubini).

2009
On April 6, 2009, L’Aquila—Visca’s hometown—was devastated by a massive earthquake.

While the earth was still shaking, Visca was occupied with rescuing his elderly father—then over ninety years old—who had been seriously injured and trapped beneath the rubble; after administering initial aid and overcoming considerable difficulties, he managed to get him to safety at the hospital in Pescara. Just a few days later, with the image of the immense disaster still fresh in his mind, Visca had to summon his remaining mental strength to evacuate the archive of his works. This archive was housed in his home in Ripa Fagnano—twenty kilometers from L’Aquila—which had been severely damaged and rendered uninhabitable by the quake.

On May 14, 2009, following a resolution by the Pescara City Council, Visca’s archive of artworks and his bio-bibliographical archive were accepted for storage in the vault of the Vittoria Colonna Museum of Modern Art. However, the troubles were not over. Following extreme weather events in December 2013, the premises of the Vittoria Colonna Museum—where Visca’s art archive was temporarily housed—flooded, causing water damage to his paintings and mixed-media works. Many pieces were devastated and the damage appeared irreparable; yet, by rallying his last reserves of physical and mental energy, and following an exhausting restoration process that lasted over a year, Visca managed to save the majority of the archive. Due to these terrible calamities and their aftermath, Visca had to try to regain his lost peace of mind; for several years, he was unable to pursue his artistic work as usual.

– In May, Visca participated in the exhibition “Cento artisti per L’Aquila” (One Hundred Artists for L’Aquila), held at the Vittoria Colonna Museum of Modern Art in Pescara. (Catalogue texts by Paola Marchegiani and Roberto Rodriguez).

2010

– He was featured in the exhibition “Il libro come opera d’arte” (The Book as a Work of Art) at the Nocciano Museum of Modern Art. (Catalogue texts by Ivan D’Alberto and Enzo Fimiani).

2011
– In June, Visca was invited to the 54th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition, marking the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy (Pescara – Ex Aurum).

– In July, Visca was invited to the 54th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition, marking the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy (Civitella del Tronto – Bourbon Fortress).

– In August, in Santo Stefano di Sessanio, Visca presented the art film “Un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso” (A Red Heart on Gran Sasso) 1975–2011 as a Special Event for the Italian Pavilion of the 54th Venice Biennale. (Catalogue texts by Umberto Palestini, Sandro Visca, Diego Carpitella, and Annunziata Taraschi).

– Visca was invited to the exhibition “VISIONI: La fortezza plurale dell’arte” (VISIONS: The Plural Fortress of Art). (Curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and Umberto Palestini) Bourbon Fortress, July 1–31.

– In December, L’Arca – Laboratory for Contemporary Arts in Teramo presents Visca’s exhibition “Un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso 1975-2011… e altre visioni” (A Red Heart on Gran Sasso 1975–2011… and Other Visions). In addition to a film screening, the exhibition features a series of large-scale works and two handmade, limited-edition “unbound” art books: Un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso and Per un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso. (The exhibition brochure includes texts by Umberto Palestini and Sandro Visca).

2012
– Visca is invited to “CORPO” – a performing arts festival curated by Ivan D’Alberto and Sibilla Panerai. Venue: Conference Hall of the MAAAC (Museum of Contemporary Art), Nocciano Castle. Sandro Visca’s ascetic journey: “Un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso.”

2015
– In September, Visca is invited to the 13th National Exhibition “Tex d’autore” (Comics & Art) in Città di Castello.

– To mark the Alberto Burri Centenary, Visca is invited to the exhibition “Intorno a Burri – Scatti d’autore” (Around Burri – Artist’s Shots) at the Art Studio Gallery in Lamezia Terme. October 29 – November 15.

– In November, the Pescarabruzzo Foundation publishes Visca’s book Perù – Donde se amarra el sol (Peru – Where the Sun Is Tethered)—a journey through art, history, and nature—as part of the “Orizzonti” series. An account of a 1978 trip to Peru, written by Visca during a period of profound vulnerability following the tragic L’Aquila earthquake. It is a book not conceived by a writer, but rather as a therapeutic act—an attempt to reconnect with the energy of those days lived with such boldness.

2018
– In March, at the Royal Palace in Milan, Visca participates in a contemporary art auction benefiting the project “Mediterraneo – Lo specchio dell’altro” (Mediterranean – The Mirror of the Other), promoted by Arturo Schwarz and curated by Gloria Gatti.

– From September 9 to 29, Abc Abruzzo Contemporaneo – luoghi d’arte (Abc Contemporary Abruzzo – Art Sites)—curated by Barbara Birindelli and Leo De Rocco—promotes a solo exhibition of Visca’s work at the Bishop’s Palace (Diocesan Museum) in Lanciano. (The catalogue includes a text by Licia Caprara).

2019
– In March, Visca is invited to the exhibition Obiettivi su Burri – Fotografi e Foto ritratti di Alberto Burri dal 1954 al 1993 (Lenses on Burri – Photographers and Photographic Portraits of Alberto Burri from 1954 to 1993), curated by Bruno Corà and held at the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco in Città di Castello; he participates with twelve photographs dating from 1969 and 1978.

– In November, the Pescarabruzzo Foundation promotes a retrospective exhibition of Visca’s work titled “VISCA CARTE INEDITE 1961-2019” (Visca: Unpublished Works on Paper 1961–2019), curated by Rita Olivieri. Held at the Maison des Arts within the Foundation’s premises, the exhibition displays 110 works created using various techniques (drawings, gouache, mixed media, collage, and watercolors).

𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐢𝐬 (𝐀𝐥𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭) 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠
Visca Unpublished Papers

Incipit
“Be that as it may, when this act of drawing derives the invention of something from the faculty of judgment, the hand—through years of study and practice—must be agile and capable of skillfully drawing and expressing whatever nature has created, whether using pen, stylus, charcoal, pencil, or any other medium; for when the intellect produces concepts that are refined and born of sound judgment, hands that have long practiced drawing reveal both the perfection and excellence of the art and the artist’s own knowledge.”

Distant Past
It is Giorgio Vasari who, with these words, leads us to consider drawing as the foundation of artistic creation, offering theoretical explanations grounded in artistic practice that address invention, experience, and the artist’s knowledge. Far from being a mere imitation of nature or an external model, invention springs from the realm of ideas—which are themselves inimitable—and serves as their immediate translation, in a reciprocal interplay between concept and practice. For, to quote the historian and painter from Arezzo: “by drawing on paper, one fills the mind with beautiful concepts and learns to render all things in nature without needing to have them constantly before one’s eyes.” Drawing—a creative form possessing intrinsic, direct expressiveness—underwent a rebirth following the decline of the Roman Empire and the darkest periods of the Middle Ages. Amidst the general “awakening” of Humanism and the Renaissance, it gradually assumed a role of primary importance, evolving over time through unconventional techniques and yielding surprising formal results; it was no longer merely a handmaiden to the work of art, but an autonomous, complete work in its own right.
Thanks to the masterpieces that define the history of works on paper, it is increasingly easy to appreciate artistic creation from its very inception—moving beyond the notion of mere provisionality or haste to which drawing and works on paper were relegated for centuries in comparison to the three major arts: painting, sculpture, and architecture.

The Recent Past
In the artistic landscape of the second half of the 20th century—specifically towards the end of its first decade—Informel (or art autre) began its progressive and inevitable decline as the factors that had driven it waned. Having played a leading role in the post-war period across Europe, the United States, and Japan, this movement had effectively dismantled form—in both its figurative and abstract senses—through the use of mark, matter, and gesture. Traces of the Informel experience in Italy would persist in the abstract and figurative art of the following decade. It was also practiced by the generation born in the 1920s; reaching maturity around 1958, this group inherited the conflict between abstraction and figuration that had emerged within traditional techniques immediately after the war. They went on to develop forms of neo-abstraction and new figuration—each with its own mannerist qualities—in which the opposition between the two modes became institutional rather than dialectical. It was above all from the 1960s onwards—amidst the economic boom and a shifting socio-cultural climate characterized by rapid acceleration across all sectors—that the visual arts experienced a period of fervent creativity. The radical revolution led by Lucio Fontana and Alberto Burri (recognized as masters by artists of subsequent generations) opened new avenues for wide-ranging experimentation in multiple directions, leading to achievements that had previously been unthinkable. These were the years—in Europe and overseas—of New Dada, Pop Art, Nouveau Réalisme, Arte Povera, and Conceptual, Minimal, and performance art; a time when traditional painting faced a profound crisis and became increasingly marginalized, pushed beyond the confines of the canvas and presented in exhibition contexts outside the traditional art circuit.

At the same time, graphic mark-making displays intense vitality, enlivened by forms of representation that—among other things—rely on materials that would have been unimaginable just a few decades earlier. Beyond helping to forge a distinctive personal style, for many artists of the period this activity serves as a constant, private practice; they are the first, and sometimes the only, viewers of both the process and the results. Through drawing, the realm of the intellect acquires a tangible, phenomenal presence and becomes a mirror for the artist’s ongoing speculative dialogue with themselves—a means of freely assessing the path taken and gaining ever-greater awareness of it.

According to Enrico Crispolti, the transformations seen in the second half of the 20th century—when viewed in terms of the typological evolution of graphic mark-making compared to the preceding two decades—suggest a greater inclination toward the immediate recording of marks. These marks tend to be more substantial and aimed at greater iconic-formal synthesis, reflecting a faster creative process in which “exploratory” drawing spontaneously and immediately takes precedence over drawing as a finished work.
This prevalence of drawing as a “stage of exploration”—instantaneous and unconstrained by academic conventions—drove experimentation during these years. Alongside techniques in use for centuries (such as pencil, charcoal, India ink, and sanguine), artists began employing methods linked to contemporary art movements, including mixed-media approaches, collage, and the use of synthetic paints and glues. Furthermore, to quote the author again, it is evident that the artist “invents his own technique and style—more than ever—according to the measure of an inner dictate”; this seems to guide his hand across the blank page as if responding to an internal monologue or a stream of consciousness—processes familiar to writers, James Joyce foremost among them. Thus, a resemblance between drawing and the written word emerges, rooted in a shared “genetic” makeup. In any case, to reduce graphic mark-making to a mere transitional stage would be to partially limit the aesthetic and linguistic autonomy it embodies; indeed, every artistic creation qualifies as a form of “exploration” within the overall trajectory of a practice that—in its very nature and unfolding—entails pauses, revisions, and returns.

Imperfect Indicative
The year was 1961; the young Sandro Visca had not yet completed his art studies when he was invited to the National Drawing Biennale—held the following year in Recoaro Terme—where he participated with two works. It marked the debut of an ‘exercise’ he had pursued since boyhood, as well as a direct encounter with the work of internationally renowned artists spanning different generations and artistic languages. From that date on, he ceased exhibiting his drawings, even though in the ensuing years he developed a substantial body of work, characterized by tireless invention and experimentation with execution techniques. The frequency of his work on paper varied—higher in some periods, lower in others—yet remained constant over the decades. For Visca, this activity is essential: a forge for ideas and an inner furnace from which to extract the incandescent metal to be transformed into the diverse works on paper he has created from his beginnings to the present day—works that are autonomous and self-contained, devoid of explicit preparatory intent. It is an enduring practice, necessary for its own sake and thus destined to remain private; yet, through the use of shared materials and analogous morphological and syntactic patterns, it resonates with—and echoes—his painting, sculpture, and environmental installations.

One must pause at Visca’s studio—an alchemist’s chamber—to admire a myriad of ‘things’ and materials arranged neatly on cabinet shelves and clearly visible through glass-fronted cases; objects that appear immovable and permanent, yet are, in reality, ready for use. These multicolored objects—fabrics of varying textures and weaves, hard plastic buttons, mother-of-pearl, ethereal and delicate feathers, and even rolls of exquisite lace—are true mirabilia. This colourful world is essential to the artist’s imagination: not every stored item will necessarily be used in the final work, yet their very presence sparks ideas and conveys a sense of infinite possibility regarding both conception and actual practice. It is much like the act of drawing—serving as the initial impetus for creation—where compositional layouts, sketched alphabets, and monochromatic background washes crystallize an idea on paper or trigger a process of organic unfolding. Just as materials are selected to catch the eye—whether through a fleeting glance or a lingering gaze—each drawing, born of a sudden intuition, becomes an unwitting part of a mental and operational process that reveals itself in the making, experienced by the artist free from any external constraints. As Carlo Pirovano writes, the inquiry becomes even more stimulating when one moves beyond a minute examination of the execution process in the strict sense—though such analysis remains useful for maintaining a tangible, en amateur connection to the artwork’s concrete, physical individuality—to consider the broader role of drawing in shaping an artistic vision, and, more concretely, in the working habits of individual artists, the daily organization of their labor, and the consequent formation of a distinct personal or collective “identity.”

Visca’s previously unseen works on paper thus constitute a statement of poetics—an artistic identity forged over the years into a unique personal vision. They are deeply embedded in the artistic milieu of the latter half of the last century while simultaneously narrating specific figurative and spatial topoi; they document the material structures and chromatic choices employed, as well as the various treatments applied to the paper and how these evolved over time. The vast number of these works forms a genuine “artist’s collection”—a cornerstone of his entire output, almost on a par with his painting. They are essential for understanding the multifaceted intellectual and creative process that defines his work as a whole, revealing it in a state of constant evolution and development. Semantically, these works on paper focus on reality and the present, drawing motifs from the artist’s rich cultural heritage, sensibilities, and interests. Eschewing both naturalistic themes and pure abstraction, the resulting narrative is striking for the diversity of its components: individual sheets of unique significance sit alongside sequences organized by stylistic affinity. Throughout, an inexhaustible inventiveness is evident, progressively gravitating toward a form of figuration centred on recurring visual entities—following an initial period clearly rooted in Art Informel—to achieve a significant aesthetic synthesis. These works on paper reveal the mastery of a distinctive visual vocabulary—featuring combinations that are at times enigmatic and at others disarmingly clear—that aligns with Visca’s broader body of work. They exist in a relationship of simultaneity or precedence relative to his large-scale paintings and sculptures; differences arise solely from the choice of support and scale, while the spatial composition and—at times—the materials selected remain consistent. Paper—an inherently fragile medium, though here generally of substantial weight and thickness—becomes the site of a series of meticulously executed operations: from gluing paper sections for collage elements and layering tissue paper to create surface irregularities, to incorporating fabric scraps, textile blends, coloured threads, and the microscopic objects also found in his paintings. The use of inks, graphite, pastels, tempera, markers, and paints imbues these works with a complexity of conception and execution that places them far beyond the realm of mere sketches or quick notes. A unifying element throughout Visca’s oeuvre is his meticulous attention to detail—a quality demanding significant time and energy during actual creation, and one that characterizes his entire output, notably the tapestries he has been producing since the early 1970s. The deliberate, unhurried pace required for this specific graphic language tempers any sense of instantaneous inspiration, instead conveying a thoughtful, measured approach to expressive codes and compositional interplay. It is evident that any future interpretation of Visca’s output cannot overlook these previously unseen papers; they enrich the analysis of his entire body of work and unequivocally reveal the vital, primal force that guided and sustained his passionate artistic calling—a quest for a distinctive, instantly recognizable language spanning everything from large-scale environmental installations to miniature works, and extending to every particle or infinitesimal detail of the creative process.

Visca: Carte inedite 1961–2019 thus offers a unique opportunity to discover a body of work spanning over fifty years of activity—previously known only to the artist himself—revealing a surprising graphic diary characterized by a disabused, ironic view of reality and a powerful, enduring expressive energy.

The Present Flows
The poetics of Art Informel, echoing in a deeply personal way, inform Visca’s early drawings, which already possess a singular identity. Executed in black ink with a fluid, sweeping stroke, they trace the forms of female figures that dissolve and tear into the background—as seen in Figura 1 (1962) and Nudo (Nude) from the same year (figs. 2, 3), the latter featuring layers of tissue paper that ripple its surface. In contrast to this spontaneous freedom of line, an early graphic experiment presents a controlled, assertive stroke; here, the figurative element is all but lost amidst a web of sharp, bold lines filling the page (fig. 53). During this formative period, the artist pairs black ink with colour to complement his sinuous lines—a fluid colour akin to gouache, ranging from watercolor-like washes to thick, impasto-like applications that create a vibrant, resonant effect (figs. 4, 5). In the two Ritratti di Norma (Portraits of Norma) from 1963 (figs. 6, 60), earth is used for chromatic effect—meaning the raw material itself replaces pigment—reflecting a practice common to the artist’s entire body of work: treating substances and materials as colour. While the portrait genre links him to art history, his faces already signal a break from all academic conventions. Alongside the female subjects of these early works on paper, Visca—as early as 1963—began depicting situations drawn from the immediate present: flashes of contemporary life that had made a strong impression on him. These are works relating to the Vajont disaster—as their titles indicate—one of which is particularly emotionally charged due to its agitated lines and colours (fig. 7), while others display a more relaxed rhythm. This latter quality stems from the use of a graphic motif that would henceforth recur in the artist’s visual language: simple, straightforward hatching—whether in black or other colours (figs. 61–63). During this period, the artist felt an urgent need to engage with his own era and interpret it through art; a prime example is the 1964 work Disastro C45 (fig. 69). Here, acrylic paints and heavy brushstrokes—juxtaposed with clearly visible layers of tissue paper—evoke an atmosphere of dramatic tension while referencing another tragedy of significant public impact.

At the same time, starting in 1964, the scope of his subject matter expanded to include a series of works centred on the Crucifixion. Far from making religious references, these pieces explore the complex symbolism of the cross by analysing contemporary forms of “martyrdom”—suffering caused by a departure from what the artist calls “human scale,” a quality he intentionally sought to uphold in his work. Crocifissione n. 25 (1965) is a prime example; the work implicitly indicts the rampant commodification of human beings driven by a socio-economic system that destroys all values. In this work, the woman displays a voluptuous yet deformed body; she is headless and possesses a large, disproportionate hand. The figure is positioned at the centre of the sheet and still reflects the gestural mark-making of Art Informel, yet it also features the heart—a motif that would become one of the dominant icons in Visca’s artistic vocabulary from this period onwards (fig. 10). In the 1966 Crucifixion, by contrast, the theme is reduced to a stark cross-shape at the centre of the blank page—a composition that repeats a broken hatching technique, neutralizing any emotional undertones and focusing almost exclusively on the signifier (fig. 11). With the central, case-like enclosure on the sheet—in which he placed various hearts—the artist anticipates the composition of actual display cases on pedestals, where he would later arrange a variety of disparate objects.

In the 1966 Untitled work (fig. 81), one observes numbers—marked in a cryptic cipher—alongside the heart; the latter is a signature motif of Visca’s artistic vision, akin to his own signature, serving as a graphic equivalent fully integrated into the composition. In Moda and Personaggio compresso (both 1967), the female subject is placed within an interlocking mechanical form, featuring decontextualized elements deliberately introduced to clash with the meticulous realism of the overall depiction (figs. 84, 85). In Regina (1967)—with its totemic form—and La sposa (1968) (figs. 12, 13)—rendered in a characteristic stylized manner—one notes affinities with contemporary paintings; these works foreshadow an interest in three-dimensionality that would later find expression in the Pupazze (rag sculptures) of the late 1960s. These two works on paper exhibit a deconstruction of the body: in the first, this is not immediately apparent due to the highly refined “mantle” covering the figure—a feature rendered in paintings of similar subjects using precious fabrics—whereas in the second, the fragmentation is visible in the fundamental forms, which are themselves embellished with tiny floral graphic patterns resembling textile designs. During this period, the artist produced works characterized by a more pared-down graphic style that subverts the female figure—whether depicted whole, as an upper body, or through specific anatomical parts—within a recurring dialectic of interior and exterior. The portrayed figure often occupies a central, exclusive position on the page or is set in phantasmagorical contexts far removed from reality, rendered through caricatural marks that distort the image. In other disorienting figures subsequently developed by the artist—in a close relationship with his painting—he proceeds by stripping away conventional canons of representation and reconstructing subjects that reflect his own imagery, set against monochromatic backgrounds or composed of tiny, non-linear hatch marks (figs. 98, 100).

Visca’s customary modus operandi—drawing upon a multitude of ideas born of the mind’s “exquisitely cerebral and generative powers” (to use Jeffrey Schnapp’s phrase) to translate visions into hand-crafted images and convert invisibilia into visibilia—tends toward a figurative style defined by distinctive typologies. His graphic mark-making—comprising inks, synthetic paints, collaged rotogravure fragments, and the incorporation of tactile materials and plastics—becomes the focal point of his artistic project, fostering a visual grammar that is increasingly personal yet constantly evolving. During this decade, his spatial layout shifts: he either covers the entire sheet with vibrant colours or centres material elements and painted symbolic icons within the composition (figs. 17–21). His working methods also adopt a consistent approach that would characterize his entire body of work from this point forward: the frequent use of stitching—specifically distinctive running stitches—to join paper and other materials, replacing the need for glue. This stitching traces patterns across the surfaces, orchestrating images that are conceived with millimeter precision—as if drawn in pencil or charcoal—thereby fulfilling the dual function of joining paper and fabric sections while simultaneously organizing them on the page. Although his works on paper, paintings, sculptures, and installations may sometimes evolve during the creative process—diverging from the initial concept due to inspirations arising from the materials or the act of making itself—the artist typically envisions the composition from the outset, guided by a clear, comprehensive plan. His versatility manifests itself in various ways, including the ten panels that make up the 1970 work Pensieri presso Amiternum (Thoughts at Amiternum) (fig. 99). Formatted like an accordion-fold booklet with pages numbered one to ten, it weaves together a genuine narrative—a sort of reportage on the act of thinking within the archaeological site of the same name. Rendered in graphite and pastel on laid paper, the work reveals a rapid stroke and an almost elemental execution; the story, told through brief phrases integrated into the drawing, unfolds as a contextualized, progressive theatrical action in which, ultimately, “a heart will be set on fire.” It exemplifies Visca’s creative process and the slow maturation of his thoughts regarding his work, linking directly to the 1975 performance piece Un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso (A Red Heart on Gran Sasso) and its accompanying video. The artist’s journey along the mountain path—accompanied by companions carrying a heart on their shoulders, a striking sculptural element—is already foreshadowed in this storyboard; the difference lies in the fact that the red cloth heart would eventually be left behind on the majestic Abruzzo mountain, where nature would dissolve it over an immeasurable span of time. Comparing the booklet with the video reveals further parallels: a setting defined by a nature that is both essential and vibrant, an acknowledgment of that nature, and the unspoken conviction that humanity is responsible for its destruction. Visca is stirred by a sense of unease regarding issues both ancient and contemporary—such as the human relationship with nature and environmental destruction (including the destruction of cultural landscapes)—driving him to create powerful aesthetic signals that invite ethical reflection and recreate fragments of lost beauty. While the extensive critical literature on the artist identifies the traditions of his native land—along with their various layers—as the roots of his practice, we are inclined to refute this view. …interpretations, given that these roots cannot be equated with a concrete location but rather with vast ‘regions’ of the imagination, whose geographical placement lies in the capacity to create forms and languages. The artist’s repertoire of symbols stems from an origin more complex than any ascribed regionalism—an origin better revealed by the composition of the work, the iconic significance of the subjects, and the evocative power of elements that are ‘out of key’ (to use Luigi Pirandello’s phrase). These elements relate to an iconic mythology that Visca constructed across his works on paper, paintings, and sculptures. The allure of his output—characterized by a pervasive lyricism that never veers into self-indulgence—lies precisely in the presence of kitsch elements within these previously unseen works and others; with an unerring sense of space, he positions these elements to disrupt the structural composition, creating a jarring boundary between dream and reality. It is precisely in this fine line between the dreamlike and the concrete—in the balance between pervasive grace and the harshness of reality—that the enchantment of these previously unseen works resides, along with the distinctive aura they, and all the artist’s works, emanate.

It was during the 1970s—a decisive period for Visca in the development of a specific figurative vocabulary—that new representational contexts emerged, centering on the landscape and its constituent elements: grass, lightning, the starry sky, clouds, trees, a bird closely resembling a kingfisher, and storms. These are rendered through a unique stylization and in a surreal manner—defining characteristics of his work. Numerous correlations can be found between the work on paper and the rest of the artist’s output—for instance, between Paesaggio (1973)—a vast wooden structure featuring motor-driven, fluttering elements (rendered using, among other things, multicolored fabrics of various shapes arranged in a sequence of small compartments and display cases)—and Paesaggio interno-esterno (1974; fig. 111), a work on cardstock in which the graphic mark-making explores the two categories named in the title; or, in other works on paper, concepts such as concave and convex, high and low.
Notturno (1976; fig. 22) is another emblematic work, lending itself to interpretation both as a meditation on space and as a work of evocative, poetic quality; this is due to the image of the firmament created using printed paper layered over black cardstock—the latter being an integral part of the piece itself. This firmament motif would reappear in later works, including the memorable tapestry In itinere (2000)—installed that same year at Palazzo Ricci in Macerata—which serves as an extraordinary metaphor for a life that begins, and ends, beneath a starry sky.

Following the Pupazze—apotropaic fetishes and the objectification of ideas developed on paper—in 1974 the artist invented a new entry in his visual alphabet. This is evidenced by a work on paper from that same year titled Nascita di un asparago (Birth of an Asparagus), a subject he would subsequently revisit in other previously unseen works over the following decades. This vegetable—known in the Middle East since the dawn of history and rich in profound significance—became the matrix for many of Visca’s creations across paper works, paintings, and sculptures. Its slender form—whether standing tall and erect or swaying horizontally within a black sea—serves as a rotating focal point of colour, a tree illuminated by moonlight, the protagonist of a perilous sunset, a maritime thought, or the tower-house of a city dedicated to the sea. From 1974 well into the 2000s, the asparagus remained an indispensable element of Visca’s oeuvre; it acts as a germinating motif that, depending on the context, sheds all reference to its real-world counterpart to become a purely compositional element. It is worth noting that this subject—like others chosen by the artist, such as lightning or trees—shuns naturalistic mimesis; instead, these forms serve as symbolic icons essential for expressing an imaginary world capable of recreating reality—a process that finds its initial manifestation in graphic mark-making. For instance, in Tempesta (Storm) from 1978 (fig. 26), the rain transforms into a vocabulary of hatched lines centred on the white page, wedged between geometrically squared bands of colour at the top of the sheet; meanwhile, in Tempesta sul lago (Storm over the Lake) from 1991 (fig. 35), the lightning traces a swirling motion against a leaden sky. The tree—previously an occasional element in many of Visca’s landscapes—becomes the sole subject of a highly refined series of works on paper dating from 2004 onwards. It is a tree possessing a strong object-like quality, linked to fire, the sea, the desert, flowers, water, and the night through an expansive visual language that synthesizes diverse compositional structures and textile-like colour schemes; it possesses a subtle, volumetric substance that seems to push the drawing right off the page. Dating to the second decade of the 2000s are the Teatrini (Little Theatres) on paper—a concept Visca had previously explored in painting and sculpture. These are visions by the artist—sometimes striking in their clarity and precision, at other times dynamic, as if the fantastical characters chosen by Visca were stepping off the stage to inhabit the real world. Notable examples include the 2008 Teatrino sulla montagna (Little Theatre on the Mountain, fig. 148), where the stage is framed by a proscenium arch of soft drapery—perhaps a night sky—cascading from a lacy “canopy.” Finely textured forms stand out in another work from 2013 and a subsequent one from 2015, which has become a nest for a bird (figs. 151, 152). This imagined—rather than real—stage space accommodates both singular subjects and a multitude of “things” united by mysterious logic within the artist’s mind; it is a realm vibrant with colour, feathers, and ephemeral elements, for which the theatre serves as the ultimate vessel. From 2009 onwards, Visca’s entire body of work has focused on what might be termed a poignant poetics of the fragment—a bitter, heartfelt ‘song’ addressed to life in its infinite precariousness, an inevitable ‘song’ aimed at piecing back together on stage what has been lost. Objects ‘recovered’ with infinite care and catalogued one by one—assigned a number and a letter as if destined for archiving in museum display cases, precious ‘relics’ recreated minutia by minutia, detail by detail—come together to reconstruct a lost universe. Here, through a language that never ceases to fascinate and surprise, Visca’s work possesses the power of a redemptive catharsis; it transcends the event itself, restoring to Art that extraordinary capacity to foster humanity and beauty.
Beauty is the very subject of a series of cadeaux created between 1995 and 2008 (figs. 153–161), in which the artist revisits his iconic visual vocabulary, the evocative echoes of time past, and his characteristic colours and materials.

Epilogue
“To think is to ponder, to weigh up; to judge is to measure against a standard. One adds or subtracts—beyond mere numbers—spatial forms, time intervals, degrees of force, and even the words of language (as Hobbes noted): for by summing names, one makes an assertion; by adding assertions, one constructs a syllogism and a proof; by subtracting implicit assertions from conclusions, one discovers new truths; by adding and subtracting laws and facts, one derives the just and the unjust. All thought is calculation. The speed of operations within the artist’s mind conceals the instinctive computations that result in the harmony and proportions of the forms.”

Rita Olivieri
San Sepolcro, 2019

– On December 7, the documentary VISCA—directed by Andrea Carella and produced by Vario-Film in collaboration with Valagro SpA Atessa—premiered in Hall 2 of the Cineteatro Massimo in Pescara. (Documentary runtime: 45 minutes).

2021
– On October 24, at the Fondazione Pescarabruzzo, Zaccagnini X L’Arte presented Sandro Visca’s print portfolio ASPARAGUS. It contains a text by Rita Olivieri and three colour lithographs on 320 g/m² Natural Evolution White paper (edition of 99, numbered and hand-signed by the artist; format: 45×60 cm).

2023
– On March 10 in Pescara, the Fondazione La Rocca / Volume per l’Arte presents the retrospective exhibition INEDITO 2014–2022. The catalogue features a text by Rita Olivieri. During the exhibition’s closing event, ten pieces of jewelry made of silver and mixed media—created by Visca in collaboration with master goldsmith Francesco Lupo—are unveiled.

Visca: The “Threads” of the Work
“Art is freedom, or it is nothing”—this is what Sandro Visca declared a few years ago, encapsulating in a few emphatic words a core tenet of his artistic philosophy. Looking back at his career today, it becomes clear that the concept of freedom served as a compass in shaping and pursuing his entire artistic endeavor. Fiercely independent of the trends and schools that offered a sense of legitimacy, and deliberately keeping his distance from the art system and market, the artist chose a path of voluntary isolation. He did so to devote himself entirely to a language—his own—that truly reflected his authentic nature and aimed for achievements that were not merely ephemeral. From this vantage point, Visca has explored the world—and continues to view it—with a clear-eyed, disenchanted gaze, free from idealization or myth-making, perceiving a reality that is fragmented and no longer scaled to the human experience. What remains for the artist, then, if not the freedom to choose, day after day, to return to a human scale? This requires a ceaseless creative movement that bridges life and art—guiding the hand from the mind and weaving the warp and weft of his visions.

Poetics of the Fragment
The splitting of the world’s wholeness into a myriad of fragments is an aspect of Visca’s conceptual development dating to the later years of his output; it reflects a profound awareness of the disintegration of human values and the fracturing of the social fabric. To his gaze, reality is beset and fractured by deep fissures—some caused by nature, others by unbridled globalization within a system of unparalleled acceleration. In the artist’s eyes, existences and objects are in a state of perpetual becoming—a process understood as the loss of their integral identity, whether due to the wear and tear of time or the increasingly widespread presence of what Giorgio Agamben termed “a man without content.” There is an overt critique of contemporary nihilism, articulated through language, alongside a reconsideration of art’s role today in the attempt to reconstruct a work capable of surviving these disintegrating forces. The movement into the void that Visca enacts around himself is driven by a fertile imagination and sense of purpose, revealing both the constant discovery of fragments and a quest for a stable unity amidst what has been lost. Yet, for the artist, the longed-for wholeness of reality—the hope that things might become whole again—is not the final destination, even as he attempts to crystallize and layer various planes of existence and the particles of a life that is no more. Rather, it is the restructuring of a precarious partiality centred on the fragment—the iconic power of his works. A fragment is a piece of fresco painting that survived a wall’s collapse; it is the section of a torn canvas—a precious artifact and a mark of memory. It represents a scene frozen at the moment of collapse amidst a blend of vague illusions, dreams, and dissonances, all resolved into ironic expressions of playfulness and bitter awareness. In this celebration of the fragment—almost always positioned at the centre of the composition—and in its cataloguing as a testament to its recovery, the “residual” nature of reality takes on an almost solemn form in Visca’s work. This form encompasses elements of “trash” and a deliberate evocation of the “ugly,” all assimilated into the pictorial context. The conceptual dissonance underlying his work never manifests in the language itself; he treats the depiction of excrement—or the word naming it—with the same regard as a classical scene frozen mid-collapse. Every aspect of reality, along with cultural reminiscences and figurative imagery, carries equal weight; and while reality—viewed in a broad sense—can never be fully reconstructed after the fracture, the artist acts as a modern-day creator, gathering all aspects of the surrounding world (even the most critical ones) into a state of equal value, where every single element is deemed fundamental and indispensable to the work’s composition. Given that Visca’s work is essentially one of reconstruction, this action follows a destruction not caused by the artist himself, but one he acknowledges and simultaneously denounces. Two equally powerful poles—the pars destruens and the pars construens—interact: the former operates subtly as analytical evidence and a starting point, while the latter manifests within the compositional space. For the artist, at this stage, creating means rediscovering what is fragmented in order to present it within the work, giving it form. …the spectator of an implicit “rift”—and in some cases, making that rift visible as a central subject. Displaying what remains serves as a tacit form of redemption against the passage of time and human behaviour, as well as a return to memory and the persistence of recollection. Indeed, an art of ruins—an art concerned with disintegration and destruction—is a recurring feature in the work of many artists from the latter half of the twentieth century onwards. Without delving into specific names or individual artistic languages, the “ugly” generally forms part of the content expressed—often through performance—and provokes a traumatic reaction; this reaction compels the viewer to reflect and to engage with the artist’s own perception of their era. This does not apply to Visca’s poetics, however, as there is no trauma in his works; instead, they produce a sense of estrangement through which he seeks to pose questions, maintaining a balance born of formal mastery. His pursuit of harmony is a challenge undertaken using the very materials that will become the artwork—materials that are, at the same time, hallmarks of his expressive style. Ethical implications underpin and ground this aesthetic transformation, creating an interdependent relationship that fosters a dialogue between reality and art, thereby rooting Visca’s work in the present day as the bearer of a unique worldview.

The Weave of Language
The visual stimuli the artist offers—paradoxes, barely perceptible indignation, provocative irony, acts of irreverence, and utopias—come to life through the weave of language: textile textures that interlace the narrative alongside elements of industrial mixed media. Fabrics of memory—refined yet humble, sumptuous yet flashy, soft yet raw, brocaded yet smooth, varying in thickness and made of cotton, linen, and carded wool—form the components of Visca’s works, where the stretched fabric itself serves as the support. These works bring into play extra-aesthetic values that are fundamental to the piece—referencing a shared heritage of individual and collective memories—alongside purely aesthetic values, such as the inherent painterly quality of the fabrics, the sonic resonance of the colours, and the tactile sensations evoked by the myriad warps and threads, allowing the eye to see and “touch” the artwork simultaneously.
Thread patterns across the fabrics trace and layer shapes, frayed edges, and gleaming tangles, organizing compositional rhythms in space—articulated through planes and architectural qualities—to create refined textures where the needle has replaced the pencil or brush.
The slow process of sewing—a defining element of the work’s creation—unites the fabrics into a dynamic ensemble of forms reminiscent of ancient artifacts, reflecting meticulous attention to detail and to the thread itself as a drawing tool. The conceptualization phase differs from the execution phase in a ritualistic process that requires a long period of development, with few changes occurring during the work’s creation relative to the initial design. The hand moving across the fabric becomes that of a visionary creator, bringing to life what the mind has conceived and selected from the vast archive of textiles and man-made objects at Visca’s disposal. Textile material is far from amorphous; it is inherently defined by the quality and texture of the fabrics, their colours, their patterns, and the way they interact with light. Over a career spanning more than sixty years, the artist has mastered every secret of natural and industrial yarns; the conception of the work—its spatial design and proportions—evolves in tandem with the choice of materials needed to achieve specific effects that Visca knows well and envisions clearly before the piece is even physically realized.
Anthropological significance and echoes of memory emerge from the stories suggested by the diverse materials the artist employs, all while maintaining a strong painterly quality. The picture plane serves as the setting where multiple narratives unfold: starting with the story staged within the composition itself, and extending to those evoked by the craftsmanship of the materials.
Stitching—that magical pattern of stitches on canvas employed and reimagined by Visca—highlights connections, creates ruptures, and resonates with tales of domestic life and religious or institutional customs; thus, the finished work and its final image allude to the many lives woven together by thread and cord, transforming a mere scrap of fabric into something of far greater dimension.

The Works
Within the poetics of the fragment, Visca’s work expresses a distinct energy and vitality—as if the painting were constantly regenerating and following its own path, independent of the harshness of conceptual premises, and bridging the dissonances found in reality through language. The various textile artifacts within the work are cataloged using numbers, letters, or both; these refer to a submerged heritage of archaeological traces that spring, above all, from the recesses of thought. The inventory codes affixed to the front of some works from this period serve as the titles for the paintings and sculptures themselves, taking on the status of an ontological entity achieved through linguistic and numerical signs. Visca’s work strikingly echoes the execution methods of traditional textiles—craftsmanship defined not by specific geographic locations, but by a shared heritage of actions. When codes do not integrate the work, titles are drawn from keywords linked to the semantic field of the fragment and the precious nature of the found object—such as the word “fragile.” This term appears on the front of the painting or sculpture—as seen in Fragile 4 (2020)—while in other instances, the terms evoke actions or feature letter combinations with a coded meaning. Clearly, in the artist’s painting, text and textile exist in a state of osmosis, displaying unparalleled compositional finesse; they represent two forms of writing united by the Latin verb texere, where the thread of the discourse is inextricably intertwined with the thread of the fabric. The use of the written word reflects a constant in the artist’s language—present in works created well before the present day—that serves primarily denotative functions. Examples include the inscription Ex voto appearing on the painted surface of a 1970 work assembled from various materials on packing boards, or the enigmatic letters in the 2004 piece Paesaggio interno (Interior Landscape); both works were featured in the 2008 retrospective exhibition dedicated to Visca at the “Vittoria Colonna” Museum in Pescara. The artist employs diverse signs drawn from different codes and assimilated into an original compositional grammar—one that even incorporates his own signature, executed using the same materials as the artwork itself and perfectly camouflaged within the composition.
In the “fragments,” the iconography of the various subjects relies on familiar figurative motifs—albeit reimagined in new forms—where any reference to reality is largely lost and the mark itself, as it disintegrates, becomes increasingly estranged, shedding all traces of recognizability. There is a measured, deliberate abstractive impulse within the essential figuration characteristic of Visca’s work, applied to icons and symbols that recur throughout his entire body of work—such as the asparagus, which is striking for its infinite range of artistic treatments and, at times, for its incongruity within the context.
The sculptural cases—crafted from iron and mixed media to house a disintegrating world—and the stelae are equally arresting and indecipherable, owing to the objects they display, their flamboyant plumage, and the mix of constructed and found elements. The 2018 work Segnali is emblematic. Here, the title alludes to a map of content—a system of signs comprising thoughts and images that chart a path flowing seamlessly from painting to sculpture, revealing great versatility and a wide range of meaningful references.
Fracturae (2018–22) is a work that breaks away from conventional formats. Due to its unusual dimensions—and as the only work executed exclusively in acrylic tempera on canvas across three staggered panels—it declares the fracture of a collapsing world. Set against the absolute void of the black background, a tormented horizon of asparagus stalks rises from the base, turning into entropic chaos and creating tension within the composition’s balance. Meticulously planned down to the last detail, this work expresses an irrefutable truth: regardless of the medium, Visca’s “painting” always shares a common denominator of aesthetic power and visual impact—an impact that astonishes the viewer even before they seek to understand the underlying reasons. The concept of fracture is evident in the collapse of the architectural structure and theatrical flats, as well as in the disintegration of the wooden planks—a material rendered so convincingly that it appears real. The artist often plays with the boundaries between reality and unreality—between what seems tangible and what is not—engaging the viewer in a benevolent deception. In Fracturae (2020), the rupture instead involves fabrics of varying weaves and colours arranged on the canvas in diverse thicknesses and shapes.
The asparagus—a recurring symbol since 1974 and an element of shifting realities—appears as a segment of an articulated mannequin in Meccanismi teatrali (2020). This painting is characterized by vibrant oblique lines and dynamic energy—both in individual details and the composition as a whole—set, once again, against a black void.
The theatrical stage space is a favored subject in Visca’s painting during this period, allowing him to explore novel compositional possibilities while drawing upon his vast and diverse repertoire of imagery—ranging from recognizable figurative subjects to enigmatic, unknown forms. In the 2020 work Theatre Z6, the spatial textures and the alchemy of white-on-white yarn fragments—at times resembling arabesques—interact with gold to define cosmic surfaces of absolute lyricism, characterized by similar, essential signifying qualities.
Alongside the compositional richness of certain works, one observes here a trait previously identified in Visca’s expressive grammar: the progressive rarefaction of his familiar icons and a rigorous selection of “scenic” subjects. This leaves ample room within the piece for empty spaces that accentuate the spatial dialogue between presence and absence, between reality and utopia. 
Rita Olivieri
January 2023

2024
– On July 12, the SANDRO VISCA ARTIST ARCHIVE was inaugurated at the Clap Museum in Pescara. The event was attended by Pescara Mayor Carlo Masci; Nicola Mattoscio, President of the Pescarabruzzo Foundation; Giuseppina Rigatuso, Superintendent of Archives and Libraries for Abruzzo and Molise; and art historian and critic Rita Olivieri. The Archive is organized into sections dedicated to installations, paintings, sculptures, mixed-media structures, stitched tapestries, and drawings. It also features innovative display units and advanced technologies—including specialized lighting systems, monitors, touchscreens, and projectors—as the entire donated body of work has been digitized and made accessible via various media. Finally, the collection includes a photographic archive, a bio-bibliographical compilation of documents, other digital materials, and a historical library containing all catalogues of solo and group exhibitions, as well as publications documenting Sandro Visca’s artistic career from 1961 to the present.

2024/2025
– Promoted by Roma Capitale, the exhibition SANDRO VISCA – FRACTURAE is being held in Rome from October 12, 2024, to January 23, 2025, at the Museo Carlo Bilotti (Aranciera di Villa Borghese); it was inaugurated by Miguel Gotor, Rome’s Councillor for Culture. Curated by Generoso Bruno for the Fondazione Pescarabruzzo, the project traces sixty years of the Abruzzo-born artist’s career through an immersive experience.

Visca – Matter and the Fragility of Existence

Much like human consciousness, the object in Sandro Visca’s work achieves its affirmation—albeit in a state of vibrant fragmentation. Reduced to mere residue, it appears transient and perishable, yet is brought into focus by the Artist’s hand through a process of recovery and cataloguing that is as mysterious as it is merciful.
Across the canvas, Visca’s deliberate action manifests in the inextricable juxtaposition of elements; their heterogeneity and simultaneity combine to define the work itself as an event.
It is the poetics underlying this compositional choice that directs the convergence of relationships—whether real or merely possible—toward the viewer’s eye.
The representation—always distorted and set in an undefined time and space—engages in a fascinating interplay between surface and the ephemeral, sustained by the artist’s oblique gaze. The very multiplicity of details traced by the Artist defies any attempt at a settled, harmonious overview.
In Visca’s works, the initial visual impression is constantly challenged by the need for a haptic mode of seeing. As the observer’s gaze traverses the surface, probing the grain and consistency of the material, it discovers a tactile anchor that facilitates a deeper engagement with the work.
If painting is the drive to construct an image, then Sandro Visca is a painter who—while pursuing a highly personal exploration of material possibilities—works to bring that image into form.
The more the Artist strives to preserve the flicker of life emanating from the fragment, the more intensely he confronts the question of the fragility of existence. Tactility, therefore, is not merely a pictorial requirement of representation; rather, by deconstructing and cataloguing reality through fragments and sections—and starting from the authenticity of the material itself—Sandro Visca employs the ancient ritual of sewing to secure, at least within the time and space of his creative process, the tangible possibility of reshaping our collective imagination.
The slow evolution of the work thus serves to restructure our field of vision. With skillful, patient manual dexterity, the artist creates sewn pieces by assembling fabrics and fragments of diverse materials—carefully selected, cataloged, and preserved. A nomadic artist and pilgrim, Visca guides us across a territory composed of landscapes, celestial movements, theatrical backdrops, and architectural structures that have grown increasingly precarious over the years. He stitches corset fragments and precious brocades onto the canvas, while carded wools evoke a painterly quality. Figurative elements are pared down to the essentials and often conveyed through recurring images; the asparagus—an ancient Mediterranean medicinal plant—was elevated by Visca in the mid-1970s to the status of a genuine icon. Thanks to its figurative and symbolic versatility, it has remained a constant throughout his work, even in recent years—ultimately appearing in the 2014 piece Frammento di merda (Fragment of Shit) as a diabolical dropping expelled by a small gargoyle or a little devil.
If “the experience of stercus is linked to the birth of culture,” Visca—in his scatological play—is well aware that order, cleanliness, and beauty are founded upon the repression of instincts, and that the mere act of citing or reading the word merda (shit)—rendered in stitched letters—evokes in the viewer a fantastic, liberating, and childlike hilarity. In the gold-decorated, third-firing ceramics of Stercus diaboli (2018), as well as in the mixed-media sculpture Oro o tra le mosche by TR-04 (2017) Excrement—sometimes merely implied—becomes, for the Artist, a critique of and judgment on the world; conversely, base materialism—linked to the human and its corporeality—becomes itself corrupted by the gold with which it gleams, in a world where economic dominance has supplanted kingdoms and nations.
The canvas—often large in scale, and having long offered unique vantage points onto imaginative narratives—increasingly reveals, in recent works, stitched geometric corners no longer capable of containing the structural stresses of the depicted architecture. The word “FRAGILE” warns the viewer of a potential collapse.
In the post-twentieth-century era, the theory of the “end of history” established the present as the sole timeline for events; it was at this juncture that the Artist sensed the danger of his own cosmogony eroding. With the dawn of the new millennium, Visca seemed to perceive the gradual emergence of a new order—one that, by devouring both form and substance, might eventually dispense with the essential relationship between spirit and matter. It is here, in the face of the violated, nameless bodies of contemporary warfare, that Visca’s little stages collapse.

Jean Clair, De Immundo, Edizioni Abscondita, Milan, 2016, p. 37.

From the very beginning, matter has defined Visca’s creative practice; even before he embarked on formal art studies, he was already moving toward a personal conception of figuration. His experimentation with unconventional materials took shape through trials involving nitro-synthetic enamels mixed with wood filler—applied with a palette knife—and rags and cloth scraps used to enrich and thicken the paint substance, which was bonded to the canvas with adhesives. Thus, a relationship with materiality has been a constant for Sandro Visca since his early youthful works—such as Relitto (1962) and Rilievo (1963)—which saw him navigate the realm of post-Informel poetics with unexpected maturity.
Amidst the magmatic flows of colour, fabrics, rags, jute, nylon, vinyl binders, and welded iron, Visca would come to embed new traces of meaning—captured from the world of mass consumption and production—into his work. He increasingly drew upon printed media and illustrated magazines; a headline or a photo clipping would serve as a trigger, allowing the artist to reference real-world events. In the mid-1960s, his Tragedies and Crucifixions series provided a vehicle for reflecting on the drama of existence. Standing somewhere between Burri and Rauschenberg, the artist began to define his own visual vocabulary, moving beyond the formless.
Starting in 1961, Visca studied at the State Art Institute in L’Aquila under the Neapolitan artist Giuseppe Desiato. During those years, Desiato—championing the power of the ephemeral—was creating precarious, temporary architectural structures whose irreverent lyricism challenged the worn-out conventions of monumentality. Visca joined Desiato’s classes in 1961, distinguishing himself in both drawing and the workshop techniques of metalwork and goldsmithing. Desiato—who from 1960 spent four years teaching Figure Drawing in the Abruzzese capital—would eventually select Sandro Visca to form “Gruppo 5,” a process not without conflict with the educational institution. The collective assembled by Desiato arose from a need to propose new artistic languages aimed at shattering provincial stagnation and insularity; Visca’s own work, meanwhile, starting from the use of materials, sought to reclaim a form of figurative art rich in materiality and pathos. Through “the torn mark and the one buried beneath successive layers of paper [on the canvas,

Biographical information is drawn from numerous consulted publications, multiple conversations between Sandro Visca and the author, and audiovisual recordings produced and authorized by the Artist over the years.

…the artist works to produce] an implicit suggestion of space.” The encounter with Desiato is, therefore, seminal. The artistic practice of the Neapolitan artist…
Encountering Desiato—and his Arte Povera sensibility and poetics of the ephemeral—allowed Visca, during his formative years, to connect with one of the most challenging and radical figures driving the ferment of the Italian and European neo-avant-gardes, a movement that openly defied the market’s hegemonic powers.
And right from the start—after leaving Abruzzo—Visca himself would maintain a contradictory relationship with the market: too reserved to elbow his way into Rome’s social circles and salons, and too independent to bow to the demands of Milanese galleries. By choice, and far removed from the art critics and the marketplace, Sandro Visca was able to freely define the direction of his artistic research and practice.
As early as 1969, for the 24th Theatre Festival in San Miniato, the Teatro Stabile dell’Aquila commissioned him to execute set designs based on concepts by Alberto Burri for Ignazio Silone’s L’Avventura di un povero cristiano (The Story of a Humble Christian).
It was a monumental undertaking. Working from three small sketches by the Umbrian master, he had to create three backdrops—each ten meters long and seven-and-a-half meters high—featuring two “combustions” (one white, one red) and a large sack. Visca created the two “combustions” inside one of the pavilions at the Milan Trade Fair.
To meet the deadline, the artist—then twenty-five years old—worked ceaselessly, day and night, for nearly a month. He created the large sack, however, in L’Aquila, at the Teatro Comunale itself.

² The biographical information is drawn from the numerous publications consulted, the many conversations between Sandro Visca and the author, and the audiovisual recordings produced and authorized by the Artist over the years.
³ Sandro Visca, S.t. [Untitled], in Gruppo 5 (Desiato, Di Vincenzo, Mariani, Pappa, Visca), San Benedetto del Tronto, Spazio Espositivo Gran Derby, 1964, p. 1.

Visca would not meet Burri until the project was already a fait accompli, during the show’s summer premiere. The creation of the set designs was merely a pretext. The most authentic encounter had, in fact, already taken place in Rome nearly ten years earlier. It was the emotion stirred by the “geometries” of the Sacks—on display in the collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art—that confirmed to the young artist from L’Aquila the need to continue exploring the possibilities of the material.
It was in San Miniato, then, that this deep emotional resonance evolved into friendship. United also by a shared passion for hunting, Visca and Burri spent time together both in Umbria—at Casenove di Mucignano—and in the mountains of Abruzzo. Nestled among centuries-old chestnut groves, Burri’s simple, austere home and studio would shelter their conversations.

– Restless within the confines of the picture plane, during those years Visca began to give physical form to the female figures he had already been evoking on canvas for five years—since the mid-1960s.
Having achieved an elemental graphic and painterly synthesis, the artist isolates these characters—these “brides”—within increasingly defined sections of the surface. The depiction of these early pupazze (effigy-like figures) seems to echo a Godard-esque cinematic montage, particularly when the viewer’s gaze shifts from the overall composition to a specific detail: a label applied to the canvas or a motif drawn from his highly personal repertoire of signs—hearts and ex-votos—which Visca was then beginning to define with ever-greater precision.
It was in 1970, then, that these pupazze leapt off the canvas to find a hallucinatory physicality made of fabric. If art seeking to escape the hyperbole of production and consumption finds—through Burri—the possibility of violating the signifying material, or—through Desiato—the need to place the artist’s body amidst the refuse and the periphery of excess, then with Sandro Visca’s pupazze, humble materials and sewing become the medium for an ancient, uncanny, and immensely powerful childhood game; here, matter—in an apparently joyful transubstantiation—strives to become a body. Work on these large fabric sculptures opened up the possibility—soon to become a definitive practice—of using the sewing machine. Setting aside the associations evoked by the creation of anthropoid figures—artificial copies of human beings, ranging from the blasphemy of alchemical processes to the early 1920s and the concept behind the Czech word robota—we find a parallel in the rag dolls Visca saw as a child: the image of the doll is first sketched onto the fabric, yet it is only through the Artist’s process that this “fetish”—by virtue of its constituent material—attains the dimension of sculpture.
The use of fabric allows the Artist to preserve softness and flexibility of movement; here, “the skin of the painting,” shedding its role as a passive support, asserts itself within Visca’s envisioned scenarios as organized, living matter.
Over time, the choice of sewing and weaving, combined with the scattering of countless meaningful details across the canvas’s stage-like space, has exposed Visca’s work to the temptation of an overly simplistic interpretation.
The Artist’s intention—even when incorporating obvious kitsch objects—remains to embed within the work sharp, sometimes mocking notes of sarcasm and irony, wherein reality is re-presented through metaphorical tension, shaped by a process of continuous semiotic translation.

⁴ In Sergio Poggianella, Giuseppe Desiato: arte e vita in antitesi al mercato, edited by Sergio Poggianella and Micaela Sposito, Desiato opere/work 1958-2008, Edizioni Stella, Rovereto (TN), 2008, p. 19. Cf. Gillo Dorfles, Desiato tra materia e fantasia, p. 11.
⁵ It was in Rome, in 1961, alongside Rothko’s first Italian exhibition, that Sandro Visca had the opportunity to see Burri’s first Sacchi (Sacks).

Ever since the materialization of his pupazze (stylized female figures), Sandro Visca has chosen to navigate the boundary between allusion and the objective reality of things—a path that defines the meaning of his practice and his daily artistic evolution.
To avoid any misunderstanding, Enrico Crispolti—in his introduction to Visca’s 1986 tapestry exhibition in L’Aquila—emphasized that this specific type of output, which has characterized the artist’s work since the mid-1970s, should be understood as “fabric pictures,” and certainly not as “decorative exercises.”
Poised between abstraction and narrative, and within the suspended time required for meticulous craftsmanship, his lightning-fast inventiveness pays a necessary tribute to the careful, repetitive gestures required to bring the idea to fruition. It is only through Visca’s works on paper—created either prior to or alongside his large-scale pieces—that we can explore the genesis and internal processes of his creative method, tracing the recurring visual and conceptual motifs.
By stitching together a highly diverse range of materials, Sandro Visca—as the new millennium approached—created In Itinere, his largest sewn tapestry, composed of various fabrics and mixed media.
In an attempt to reveal the meaning of life, Visca’s work begins with a sky and—in a cycle of eternal return—concludes within the mysteries of another sky. Much like the Bayeux Tapestry—which, across its seventy meters, uses embroidery to recount the events of the Norman Conquest of England—Visca’s tapestry, spanning thirty-four linear meters, depicts a sequence of events born from the artist’s reflections on the “wool routes” and the myriad encounters and lives associated with them.
From his youth, Visca frequented the high mountains, where the joy of discovery and the silence nurtured the development of an inner quest. It is here that the magical animism underlying the artist’s work finds its genesis in an ancestral materiality—one not yet eroded by modernity.
The immediate legibility of certain visual outcomes might seem to belie the complex layering of his artistic language: lopsided, uneven stars; birds—whether solitary and lost or in flocks; cumulus clouds; and jagged lightning bolts are just a few of the recurring elements.
Figures (pupazze), altars, and reliquaries dedicated to human salvation—along with other symbols from his personal lexicon—constantly recur throughout the artist’s body of work.
The connection between the artworks, the biography of this artist from L’Aquila, and the community to which he feels he belongs is evident, even when not explicitly stated. In 1972, amidst the highest peaks of Abruzzo, the concept for the kinetic work Un Cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso (A Red Heart on Gran Sasso) was born; the film itself would be shot on 16mm stock three years later. The red ribbons, the slow walk, the large red heart—which, despite the hardships of transport, ascends and remains exposed to the elements—the descent into the valley, and a sort of open-ended conclusion: these elements mark the Artist’s engagement with the ritual as both a recognition and an affirmation of a vital need.
In this work, Visca intuits and anticipates more contemporary approaches in which artists intervene along the fault line separating nature and culture.
With Cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso (Red Heart on Gran Sasso), by grasping the social function of ritual common to many pre-capitalist societies, the Artist stages a deeply spiritual practice; here, the ritual—traversing the artistic-performative event—conceptually regenerates our symbolic culture. symbolic.

⁵ See Alessandro Catalano (ed.), Karel Čapek, R.U.R. Rossum’s Universal Robots, Marsilio Editori, Venice, 2015, p. 10.
⁶ Enrico Crispolti, Gli Arazzi [The Tapestries], in Sandro Visca. Cuciti. L’Aquila, Forte Spagnolo, 1986, Edizioni del Gallo Cedrone, L’Aquila, 1986, p. 18.

Visca revisited the theme of engaging with the landscape—albeit from a different perspective—at the 15th Milan Triennale, where he presented a large wooden structure featuring acrylic paint, fabrics, and volatile elements set in motion by an intermittent electric motor. The work, titled Paesaggio (Landscape), seems almost capable of housing all the contemporary altars and reliquaries the artist produced in the early 1970s.
The 1973 Triennale proved to be one of the event’s most interesting editions: Burri was present with Teatro continuo, while Marotta’s work Paradiso artificiale (Artificial Paradise) stood alongside a piece by De Chirico in the Triennale gardens. In his recollections, Visca cannot separate Giorgio De Chirico from the space of the artwork itself—where the painter sat motionless at the centre of his Bagni misteriosi (Mysterious Baths), as if he were part of the piece; that Triennale, however, marked the beginning of the bond between Visca and Gino Marotta. The two would later be invited to Venice, to the Central Pavilion, to reconstruct Lucio Fontana’s work Ambiente spaziale a luce nera (Spatial Environment with Black Light). The 1976 Biennale is generally remembered for the artists’ reflections on environment, participation, and cultural structures. While Enrico Crispolti’s survey in the Italian Pavilion explored and engaged with the languages of recent avant-garde movements—which were attempting to respond to the demand for new social participation that had emerged during Italy’s protracted “Sixty-Eight” era—Visca, by reconstructing Fontana’s work in a space curated by Germano Celant, had the opportunity to shape and explore reflections on the physical and perceptual interactions between environmental space and artistic inquiry, as well as on the physical and linguistic crossovers that liberate artistic practice from a strictly visual monopoly. Indeed, from the welded iron structures of certain “Crucifixions” to the encased forms of his reliquaries, Visca’s creative process has always involved moving beyond the confines of traditional painting and sculpture. In the former instance, he seeks to make the surrounding environment subservient to the artwork; in the latter, he attempts to encapsulate the tangible, aesthetic reality of a totality within the work itself. Breaking free from the seething, two-dimensional nature of the support—combined with the desire to “contain” and preserve a social and aesthetic whole—steers his artistic practice toward the realm of environment and relationship.
In 1995, in Pescara, Visca presented the installation Il Grande firmamento (The Great Firmament). The work consisted of a vast, completely darkened space—originally conceived as a volume measuring ten meters by ten meters—approached via a smaller entrance.
For the viewer, immersed in total darkness amidst the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Krzysztof Penderecki, the only option was to look upward, finding a sole point of reference in a starry sky painted with fluorescent tempera and illuminated by black lights. Moving along an inclined plane in the dark heightened the sense of disorientation and sensory displacement; thus, the firmament remained the only orienting reference the artist offered the visitor.
Visca’s works—which we call “paintings” only by convention, given their tactile quality—always invite the viewer to traverse them; even when standing before the display cases housing many of his sculptures, we feel a compelling need to project ourselves into their interiors. They are small—sometimes minuscule—miniaturized environments containing a world in a state of apparent, entropic unfolding. As in PA-FX1-3B and —also from 2020—in Teatrino dorato (and the earlier The End from 2017), we would like to find ourselves, like tiny insects, traversing the structures of the minuscule Giardino or experiencing the wonder of encountering the rhinoceros in Ultimo safari.
_

Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori (in the 1550 and 1568 editions), edited by Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, Sansoni, Florence, 1967, vol. I, p. 111.

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⁸ See: Nicolas Bourriaud, Inclusioni – Estetica del Capitalocene, Postmedia Books, Milan, 2020.

¹ Ibid., vol. VI, pp. 155–156.
¹ Giorgio De Marchis, L’arte in Italia dopo la seconda guerra mondiale, in Storia dell’Arte Italiana, Il Novecento, Einaudi, Turin, 1982, vol. 7, p. 607. For further in-depth analysis, see the entire contribution, pp. 551–625.
¹ The expression “graphic writing” is used in the text as a synonym for the term “drawing.”
¹ Enrico Crispolti – Mauro Pratesi, L’arte del disegno nel Novecento italiano, Editori Laterza, Rome-Bari, 1990, p. 325.
¹ Ibid., p. 326.
¹ A technique employed in the short story collection Dubliners (published in 1914) and the novel Ulysses (1922), both cited here in their original English-language first editions.
¹ Carlo Pirovano (ed.), Disegno e scultura nell’arte italiana del XX secolo, Museo della Permanente, Milan, 24 January – 13 March 1994, p. 12, catalogue.
¹ The term “painting” used in the text is understood in a broad sense.
¹ Cf. the work on paper—among others—titled Ricordi (1975) (fig. 20).
¹ During this same year, the artist also developed a Via Crucis in which the story of Christ’s journey to Calvary—across the sequence of the fourteen stations—is revisited through a contemporary lens, employing a highly expressive language and dramatic incisiveness, and incorporating a verbal narrative of the unfolding event (figs. 162, I–XIV).
¹ [Sandro Visca in] Antonello Rubini, Una metabiografia tra racconto e intervista, in Visca Opere 1962–2008 (with an essay by Plinio Perilli), Museo d’Arte Moderna “Vittoria Colonna,” Pescara; Textus, L’Aquila 2008, p. 29, catalogue.
¹ Cf. La sposa (1968) and Personaggio (1969), reproduced in Visca Opere 1962–2008 (op. cit.), pp. 80, 81.
¹ Cf. ibidem, pp. 82, 87.
¹ Cf. Personaggio alla moda, 1968 (fig. 88), Senza titolo, 1968 (fig. 91), Regina di cuori, 1968 (fig. 90), Personaggio vanitoso, 1969 (fig. 15), Personaggio in verde, 1968 (fig. 14), Sesso sotterrato, 1971 (fig. 105), Sesso di vergine in scatola, 1971 (fig. 104).
¹ Jeffrey Schnapp, “Disegnare un secolo,” in Irina Zucca Alessandrelli (ed.), Disegno italiano del XX secolo. Opere su carta della Collezione Ramo, Silvana Editoriale, Cinisello Balsamo, 2018, p. 17.
¹ See Umberto Palestini (ed.), Visca. Un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso 1975–2011, Textus Edizioni, L’Aquila, 2011, exhibition catalogue.
¹ See, among others, authors Enrico Crispolti and Tito Spini, whose texts are also published in Visca Opere 1962–2008 (op. cit.), on pp. 178 and 178–179, respectively.
¹ Cf. Visca Opere 1962–2008 (op. cit.), p. 91.
¹ See Paola Ballesi (ed.), Visca “In itinere”, G.T.E., L’Aquila, 2000, plates 1–30.
¹ Cf. Visca Opere 1962–2008 (op. cit.), p. 82.
¹ See, among others, the work Nascita di un asparago from 1992 (fig. 37). ¹ See the works on paper Fuoco notturno (1987, fig. 30), Asparagi dorati (1992, fig. 36), Tramonto pericoloso (1994, fig. 136), Pensieri di mare (1994, fig. 38), La città degli asparagi (2000, fig. 42), and Personaggio monumentale (2008, fig. 147); the works Enigmaticità del personaggio (2004) and L’albero dei sogni proibiti (2006); and, looking back, the installation Grandi asparagi (1993)—made of wood, bronze, and leather—in Visca Opere 1962–2008 (op. cit.), on pp. 141, 154, and 119, respectively.
¹ This creative period began following the disastrous L’Aquila earthquake, which deeply affected the artist on a personal level as well.
¹ See, for example, the work Reperto BL-99 (2016, fig. 49).

Sandro Visca, an attentive explorer and observer of nature, lives in Abruzzo, deeply connected to the complex cultural strata of his heritage—layers from which he often draws subtle references for his work. What makes his artistic personality particularly compelling is his constant technological exploration, spanning both the graphic-pictorial realm and the study of diverse expressive materials. This experience enables him to reclaim colour through the very nature of his materials and to increasingly heighten the sense of estrangement within his imaginative narrative. His commitment to mastering the media he employs in painting is equally evident in the manual craftsmanship of his rag sculptures from 1969–1970 and, above all, in the stitched, mixed-media works of recent years.
In the current exhibition, while the large works on honeycomb cardboard—alongside other mixed-media pieces and stitched fabric works (such as JP.09, LP.76, and RP.05 from 2018; the earlier Fragile 1 and Fragile 2 from 2015; the contemporaneous Reperto bianco; and the 2014 works 851.RI.60, A.009, N.183.RF, and VD.90.R)—evoke the ancient pupazze (traditional effigies) through a fresh visual language, it is the large-scale work Fracture that fully encapsulates the meaning of the artist’s most recent research.
If, in a small-format work from 2020—assembling stitched textiles and carded wool—Visca is compelled to acknowledge that “It ends, everything ends,” it is in the contemporaneous Fracture (developed between 2018 and 2020) that the artist succeeds in capturing the precise moment of an internal collapse. The architectural forms collapse in on themselves, giving way chaotically and attempting to reach out visually to the viewer. The asparagus—a recurring icon in Visca’s imagery—is presented in a tragic tangle; elements that once soared with caustic boldness now appear damaged, suffering, and shattered.
They seem to fold in on themselves as if shielding against the collapse. There appears to be no hope left for the survival of these fragile existences—save for that final breath of hope which, with stubborn persistence amidst the drama, defines the human spirit as it traverses the realm of the living.
The answer to the dramatic nature of the artist’s reflections may well lie in the most recent installation created by Sandro Visca in 2024.
The work comprises three elements: two paintings and a golden ladder. The first painting—set within a thick, black plastic Baroque-style frame—features a fracture in the upper-left corner suggesting a proscenium arch; painted in black and gold, alongside other elements stitched onto fabric weathered by time, is the repeated word AMORE (Love). The second painting, against which the ladder rests, bears the inscription Théâtre de l’amour.
Connecting the two panels is a golden ladder; on each of its rungs, the word AMORE is inscribed in gilded bronze lapidary lettering. The choice of typeface serves to lend a sense of permanence to the concept being expressed. Having previously translated human fractures into the language of precarious architecture, Visca now seems to offer us, through this work, the healing power of the only balm capable of treating those wounds. The viewer, faced with an emotional crossroads, has the choice of perceiving either an act of extreme sarcasm on the part of the Artist or the affirmation of the only possible hope. The only one that remains: LOVE.

Generoso Bruno
June 2024
    
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¹ Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti nelle redazioni del 1550 e del 1568, edited by Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, Sansoni, Florence, 1967, vol. I, p. 111.
² Ibidem, vol. VI, pp. 155–156.
³ Giorgio De Marchis, L’arte in Italia dopo la seconda guerra mondiale, in “Storia dell’Arte Italiana, Il Novecento”, Einaudi, Turin, 1982, vol. 7, p. 607. For a further and in-depth analysis, cf. the entire contribution, pp. 551–625.
⁴ The expression “graphic writing” (scrittura grafica) is used in the text as a synonym for the term “drawing” (disegno).
⁵ Enrico Crispolti – Mauro Pratesi, L’arte del disegno nel Novecento italiano, Editori Laterza, Rome-Bari, 1990, p. 325.
⁶ Ibidem, p. 326.
⁷ Method adopted in the short story collection Dubliners (published in 1914) and the novel Ulysses (1922), both cited in their first editions in the original English.
⁸ Carlo Pirovano (ed.), Disegno e scultura nell’arte italiana del XX secolo [Drawing and Sculpture in 20th-Century Italian Art], Museo della Permanente, Milan, 24 January – 13 March 1994, p. 12, exhibition catalogue.
⁹ The term “painting” used in the text is intended in a broad sense.
¹⁰ Cf. the work on paper titled Ricordi (Memories) from 1975 (fig. 20), among others.
¹¹ During this same year, the artist also created a Via Crucis (Stations of the Cross) in which the story of Christ’s journey to Calvary—across the sequence of fourteen stations—is reinterpreted through a contemporary lens, employing a highly expressive language and dramatic incisiveness, and incorporating a verbal narrative of the unfolding events (figs. 162, I–XIV). ¹² [Sandro Visca in] Antonello Rubini, Una metabiografia tra racconto e intervista, in Visca Opere 1962-2008, with an essay by Plinio Perilli, Museo d’Arte Moderna “Vittoria Colonna”, Pescara; Textus, L’Aquila 2008, p. 29 (exhibition catalogue).
¹³ Cf. La sposa, 1968, and Personaggio, 1969, reproduced in Visca Opere 1962-2008 (op. cit.), pp. 80, 81.
¹⁴ Cf. ibidem, pp. 82, 87.
¹⁵ Cf. Personaggio alla moda, 1968 (fig. 88), Senza titolo, 1968 (fig. 91), Regina di cuori, 1968 (fig. 90), Personaggio vanitoso, 1969 (fig. 15), Personaggio in verde, 1968 (fig. 14), Sesso sotterrato, 1971 (fig. 105), Sesso di vergine in scatola, 1971 (fig. 104).
¹⁶ Jeffrey Schnapp, “Disegnare un secolo,” in Irina Zucca Alessandrelli (ed.), Disegno italiano del XX secolo. Opere su carta della Collezione Ramo, Silvana Editoriale, Cinisello Balsamo, 2018, p. 17.
¹⁷ See Umberto Palestini (ed.), Visca. Un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso 1975-2011, Textus edizioni, L’Aquila, 2011, exhibition catalogue.
¹⁸ See, among others, authors Enrico Crispolti and Tito Spini, whose texts are also published in Visca Opere 1962-2008 (op. cit.), on pp. 178 and 178–179, respectively.
¹⁹ Cf. Visca Opere 1962-2008 (op. cit.), p. 91.
²⁰ See Paola Ballesi (ed.), Visca “In itinere”, G.T.E., L’Aquila, 2000, plates 1–30.
²¹ Cf. Visca Opere 1962-2008 (op. cit.), p. 82.
²² See, among others, the work Nascita di un asparago from 1992 (fig. 37). ²³ See the works on paper Fuoco notturno (1987; fig. 30), Asparagi dorati (1992; fig. 36), Tramonto pericoloso (1994; fig. 136), Pensieri di mare (1994; fig. 38), La città degli asparagi (2000; fig. 42), and Personaggio monumentale (2008; fig. 147), as well as the works Enigmaticità del personaggio (2004) and L’albero dei sogni proibiti (2006), and—looking back—the installation Grandi asparagi (1993, in wood, bronze, and leather); all appear in Visca Opere 1962–2008 (op. cit.), on pages 141, 154, and 119, respectively.
²⁴ This creative period began in the wake of the disastrous L’Aquila earthquake, which deeply affected the artist on a personal level as well. ²⁵ See, for example, the work Reperto BL-99 from 2016 (Fig. 49). personal.
²⁵ See, for example, the work Reperto BL-99 from 2016 (fig. 49).

Sandro Visca, an astute explorer and observer of nature, lives in Abruzzo, deeply connected to the complex cultural strata of his heritage, from which he often draws subtle references for his work. What makes his artistic personality particularly compelling is his constant technological exploration—spanning both the graphic-pictorial realm and the study of diverse expressive materials. This experience enables him to reclaim colour through the materials themselves and to increasingly heighten the sense of estrangement within his imaginative narrative. His commitment to mastering the media he employs in painting is equally evident in the manual execution of his rag sculptures from 1969–1970 and, above all, in the stitched, mixed-media works of recent years.