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FRANCESCO DEL CASINO: THE ARTIST OF JULY 2nd 2003 BANNER |
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FRANCESCO DEL CASINO: THE ARTISTOF JULY 2nd 2003 BANNER Francesco Del Casino born in Siena in 1944 attended the Art School "Duccio di Buoninsegna" and, later, in Florence, he got a master under the guide of the painter Grazzini. His painting activity began in 1962 with a production influenced by Guttuso’s style, later followed by a period influenced by Pablo Picasso. In 1964, as a painting teacher, he moved to Orgosolo, in Sardinia, going on working under his great passion. In this period, we count about two thousand among his oil-paintings and numerous murales, among which those painted for April 25th, 1972, in occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Italian Liberation. Since his return in Tuscany, in 1985, after having renounced to his teaching, he devoted himself to paint, starting to show his interest on sculpture and ceramics. Such new interests will make him take part, as a teacher, in educational projects within a social organization of disabled people. Numerous are his personal and collective exhibitions in Italy (in Nuoro, Reggio Emilia and Sanremo) and abroad (in Grenoble, Moscow). Despite the influence of the cubists, his style is very personal and extrapolates the introspective objectivity of the represented subjects. Such inwardness is extremely clear in works representing stories of people and lands. A sensitive and refined plan focusing on the elegant chromatism of strong lines; a chromatism, which underlines the details that Del Casino’s brush proposes as central reading elements.
Siena
is like that, either take it or leave it. Coming
back to Tuscany after more than twenty years, Del Casino continued
teaching the last and most outcast members of our society. He teaches
them his full and playful style which is round and optimistic, although
it was obtained by deforming a reality which he knows is less triumphant
and simple than it seems to be. The
painter was as passionate in his work as he is when teaching disabled
individuals to paint ceramics, through a social cooperative. He teaches
them to paint a sort of an immense plate just like the ones being
made in his workshop, where Ferdinando plays his role, by joining
art and care for other individuals. They did not have from life what
everyone should demand, and rather developed such skills and sensibilities
with their hands proving that the community ought not and shall not
neglect all his children because everybody is precious. And then the Masgalano: a plate of light The
Masgalano this year is offered by the renowned “Dante Alighieri”
society that did and still does so much for the Italian language.
The “Dante Alighieri” association this year organizes
its congress in Siena, just like it did about a century ago. A beautiful
plaque is left in the "Sala del Mappamondo", in memory of
that event. At
last, having finished the preparatory rituals, let the feast begin,
where there shall be space only for other thoughts and sensations.
The city shall renew its rituals and shall do it only for its sake,
for its people, for us!
Presentation of the Banner by Roberto Barzanti Here is the banner, prize for the coming July 2nd: “Here it is” may be the usual initial words for this rendezvous of presentation, a cheers of satisfied curiosity marking the beginning of a public and lively event destined to end up with a the final, spasmodic and hoarse “Give it to us”. Nice gossips on the banner, interviews and anticipations, but the interpretation of a work of art, such as a triumphal object as the banner for the Palio, needs analysis, endurance and deference. A banner is not like a goal at a football match, it does not request for an immediate applause or disapproval. But it must be striking. Everybody has the right to read it according to his own sensitiveness. A banner is not a painting like many others: it is more complex and has to respect various functions. On one hand and transitorily, it is a procession banner, on the other, it is a desired prize of victory, an icon of symbols and heraldry, an historical representation, a calculated allegory, but since about thirty years, it is a free and fantastic painting, released by too many obligations. The trend to foretell by the analysis of the colours or by singling out the clues of omen is just recent and influenced by the games of an age closer to the useless superstitions of horoscopes than to the purity of belief and to the acknowledgment of the real aesthetics. Let’s analyse together the banner by Francesco Del Casino. It is worth to remind his background. Francesco attended the Art School in Siena and among his teacher he likes to remind Aldo Marzi and Bruno Marzi. Then, once in Florence, he followed the teaching of Renzo Grazzini. His first paintings of his eighteen years – Francesco was born in 1944 – are the proof of a strong admiration for the popular epic of Renato Guttuso; and when he can see for the first time in Paris, in 1968, Picasso’s paintings he is like dazzled. A date, a place, an author which profoundly mark Francesco’s world anchoring his ethic and formal research. His choice to leave to Sardinia to fulfil the task of art teacher was not only due to practical reasons. This period represents the realization of a vocation, responds to a generous feeling of life, explains the practice of artistic creativity. Those who have been in Orgosolo, Nuoro and Monte Ortobene, through the bends of a winding and restless road with the Barbaglia in the background can understand the emotion given by the murales painted along the streets of a region which was once closed and surly and which is now transformed, thanks to such declarative and involving painting, into a path within the identity of a region, among people and symbols of dramatic fights and firm hopes. At many street corners, the frescos vibrate with civil passion: they are the result of an intense dialogue and common pedagogical intents. They live in those streets as if they were naturally domiciled there. Francesco arrived at Orgosolo in 1964, pushed by a movie suggestion, “Banditi a Orgosolo” by Vittorio De Seta. Ten years later, he started his experience with the murales, with the clear impulse to “break the wall between the school and the society”. He wanted to transfer something from the fertile winds of 1968 into that part of Italy caught in violence and blackmails. It is a very noble chapter of public painting, which is neither celebrative nor allegoric, but influenced by the strong neo-realistic climate and definitely anti-academic. Such suffered atmosphere common to the young people’s difficult joy, happy to give a movement to the walls of those grey houses frightened by scenes full of colours and strength, pushed Francesco to “definitely break – as he states – with the tradition of the Tuscan 20th century.” In those collective works, the influence of Guttuso, Picasso and Léger is evident as well as the influence of a false-primitive culture. Francesco is not afraid of measuring himself with the great ones and he translates them into his own style. He prefers the analytic traits, because he does not want to “show the exterior skin, but the intention, the most intimate “vis” (strength) of his characters” (Arturo Carlo Quintavalle). Since then, he coherently followed a line, which never gave up the social dimension. His work of affirmed painter and skilled ceramist always went along together with an active solidarity. He cannot conceive a painting which will not include learning and liberation. Within the organization “Riuscita sociale” (Social Success), which takes care of young disabled people, he asserts his engagement expressed in a humble, voluntary, disinterested and prompt work.The banner celebrating Sant’Ansano, one of the four Saints protectors together with San Savino, San Crescenzio and San Vittore, fully reflects the rules of a painting which wants to represent figures and symbols of the tradition according to an essential syntax, reinventing the lost imagination and bringing it back to a new life. Those who wanted the little Virgin Mary of Provenzano, stiff in her enigmatic remoteness, to dominate, this year, the young Ansano, worshipped in Siena as the baptiser – a title attributed to him apparently in the 12th century – invited us to think about the times of our ancient town and its contested Christian origins. Francesco has been able to fully develop this topic, the one of an identity which must not be lost: it should be fixed, if not on the wall of a church or a palace, on the silk of a banner destined to reach many others in a sorrowful and jubilant litany. The young martyr, dishevelled and attentive, wrapped in the red mantle of torment, stretches vertically gripping a crossed lance, on the top of which waves, according to the tradition, the “balzana” (the black and white standard of Siena). But please, do not look at the banner with realistic indolence, because this painting wants to represent the dynamic of a presence, the strength of gestures, the spirit of the soul and not merely reproduce the traits of a man who, in many occasions, attracted attention and artists. It makes us think about the triumphant Ansano of the frontal glass window of Duccio or the praying Ansano in the Majesty, where he is knelt and absorbed in the ordered group of angels, but it makes us think above all about the Ansano in the Triptych (by Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi, 1333), once in the chapel of our Duomo and at present in the Uffizi in Florence. The saint is a young knight with an astylar cross, which, from its top, becomes a civic standard, in a context of complementary civil and religious symbology typical, since then, of the intrepid standard bearer arrived from Rome to convert and encourage people. Ansano, in this banner, is no more the classic curly-hair young man represented by Sodoma, he looks more like the young Francesco Vanni by Francesco Vanni in his wonderful painting of 1596, which has replaced the Triptych in the corner chapel of the left transept of our Cathedral, now in Florence. Ansano looks busy with his mission, in the middle of devoted people and distract chatting notables. The scene reminds of a young, but wise and mature Jesus among the Doctors of the Temple. About his biography, the most important sources are two Latin “passions” not perfectly compliant. The first of the half of the 7th century reports about a young rebel man, who escaped from his noble father Tranquillino and Rome, where Diocleziano and Massimiano organized persecutions. This young man riskily proclaimed the faith in Christ among adventures, miracles and tortures until he arrived in Siena, by the road Cassia, where, imprisoned, he went on proclaiming his religion until martyrdom. The second reports of the end of the 3rd century speak of an Ansano between the Arbia river and Dofana, in a beloved land of the Sieneses, run and consecrated, a land of blood, announcement of further terrestrial battles. Difficult to understand the Ansano’s faith if we do not keep in mind the quarrel for the boundaries of Siena’s and Arezzo’s dioceses, a quarrel directly involving the church of Dofana, reincluded in the Arezzo’s diocese, until 1995, when a decree put an end to such difficult confrontation. Since Ansano’s relics (except his head, left to the people of Arezzo) were moved in 1107 to Siena, the Sieneses use to worship not only the body of a martyr, but they also claim political features. After all, Ansano was a saint on a common borderline and his notoriety is also bound to the claim of independence and sovereignty. Astaldi, as well as Wilerat and Wasperto promote his worship as much as bishops as Gualfredo. That’s the reason why Ansano keeps a privileged position, even when the Virgin Mary was called to fulfil the task – certainly very difficult - of celestial patron and “advocata senensium”. Ansano has an outstanding position in the banner. His athletic and knotty body recalls El Greco’s saints. He does not baptize a common person, but a gentle woman, whose traits reminds those of a marble herma: a young and attentive Siena, not worried about the children – perhaps Senio and Ascanio – who play with the “barberi”. The water phial is abstractly spherical and inside identical spheres, reproduced as with a stamp, cells of an unique sequence, contain the colours of the Contradas. Francesco is allusive. His debt to the beloved masters is evident, even if their language has been translated into a personal style: Picasso is tamed, soothed. In the space, time can dilate with no limits. Ansano’s background landscape culminates in the hill of the Duomo, completely achieved about one thousand years after the death of the martyr killed by an imperial despotism. The construction of the Cathedral should be considered as the end of an event started with the propagation of the same faith of which Ansano was apostle. Monsignor Bruno Ancilli states: “With a beautiful and serene Ansano / a blazing light shone / a fluttering hope was born / for the new Humanity”. The candid Duomo stands out on the hill where Siena was founded, as a mirage among woods and fields. It was the period when “the large forests receded, wrote Fumagalli, as well as plains, while the villages multiplied and the cultivated lands grew all over Europe”: “the myth of the town was born, reached and since then followed: when in the old times theatres, arenas and thermal baths were built, now people built and rebuilt higher and larger cathedrals.” The moon spreads its light in a night, which grows pale as soon as dawn approaches. A new age, rooted on Ansano’s engagement, who successfully fought for his faith, rooted on the first centuries, which generated a new meaning of life and a community of people with a common destiny: Siena, fraternal and quarrelsome, but united, extremely attached to its traditions and therefore devoted to the courage of a young brave man. Called to participate in the turmoil of the Palio, during these days Ansano will be felt by everybody in the strength which pushed him to refuse, up to his personal sacrifice, an unfair and insolent order, a strength which pushed him to become the bearer of the spiritual freedom, solidarity and equality, as well as to build, thanks to the ties with a religion characterized by laic bonds, the everlasting bases of a city: Siena, which, besides its wounds and defeats, always was, and still is, proud of its identity, fed by many important dear names. And he, concordant, praised and defended it. For ever and ever. Roberto Barzanti
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