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Rating: Imola, San Domenico Museum 16/9-29/10-2017
1)
A surprise box (gift from Stefania) with many colorful hand-written notes inside …
On each note, verses transcribed in the most gentle handwriting (Stefania's) …
So praise to Stefania (always be praised)...
(always)
But praise also to those who wrote those verses, namely Tonino Gottarelli, an unjustly forgotten artist.
The verses in the box are mostly taken from “Vita di un’idea”, a book that is absolutely pointless to look for. It’s been out of print for years, and I don't even own a copy.
However, I live in Imola. And Imola, besides being my city, is also the place where Tonino Gottarelli lived, more or less. And his books can be found in Imola.
Maybe at someone's house, maybe in the library, but they can be found.
The first time I happened to have “Vita di un’idea” in my hands, I… was...
I was absolutely spellbound.
And the moment I read “AND HERE I AM, I WISH TO BE HERE, BUT I’M NOT HERE ENOUGH”, well, I remember that moment well.
2)
Tonino Gottarelli also had his fifteen minutes of semi-fame…
It was the nineties, and, somehow (I imagine someone dragged him into it), as I said, I don't know how, but for a couple of episodes, he ended up in front of the Maurizio Costanzo Show audience …
The first episode went quite well: ..
That eccentric old man, with a long beard and long hair, seemed absolutely perfect for the television audience. Sure, he was a bit abstruse, but also friendly and reassuring.
But then Tonino overdid it with extravagance in the second episode ... and ... and they didn’t invite him again…
3)
Come what may, every afternoon, Tonino Gottarelli took his racing bike and cycled around the Imola hills. Then, back home, he painted what he had seen.
Those hills, after all, were constantly renewing for him and were never the same. And all of us, guilty of not perceiving what we had around, were, for him, the distracted ones.
Gottarelli, regarding his bicycle trips, spoke of tourism in centimeters, or the tourism of the poor. And this fact, I admit, made me smile.
Sure, the hills, but his trips were also to places like Castel Bolognese or Mordano, small towns around Imola that no one would dream of considering.
Yet he could write something like this about Castel Bolognese:
“And the sky intrudes from everywhere, the sky that persists as a background slipping between the empty spaces, between wall and wall, between houses, on the corners, clear as a face. And it's enough for me to hang out with a sunspot that underlines the right angle of the cornice, two minutes on the clock are enough for me to have two hours of pleasure”
4)
And yes, for him, the hills were always different.
We've said it, he wasn’t distracted or inattentive.
Oh well, maybe distracted, since an electricity bill, which at that point was no longer an electricity bill, could end up in his collages.
“Where’s the electricity bill, Tonino?”
“How should I know, Mariana”
“And yet I had put it here”
“I haven’t seen it”
“But darn it Tonino, did you put it in the painting?”
“Ah, that was an electricity bill?”
Everything ended up in those collages.
Like he would go out early in the morning to tear down advertising posters. And when they came off, the posters took some rust from the stands they were attached to. And it was that rust that interested him, the rust and then the moisture dripping onto the painting.
Then, to say, in the collages ended up the pages of the Gazzetta dello Sport, a daily newspaper that he, being a cycling enthusiast, bought every morning.
Advertising posters, the Gazzetta dello Sport, and a lot, a lot of other stuff.
5)
“Guido, if you have time you should accompany me to a place”
“Alright Tonino”
(The place was a semi-hidden spot in the hills that only he knew, where irises grew)
“Would you help me pick them?”
“Sure Tonino”
(And, once picked, the irises are wrapped in the pages of the Gazzetta)
“Here, now we can go back, and it’s noon, it’s time to eat”
(Because at noon for every old man from Romagna, and therefore also for him, it’s time to sit at the table)
“Bye, later I’ll start working”
“Bye Tonino”
“Guido, could you come over to my house? I need to show you something...”
“Sure, Tonino”
(Not many hours had passed, and Tonino had already done what he had to do. The drawing of the irises was ready)
“What do you think Guido, do you like it?”
“My god Tonino, it’s beautiful!!!”
“Do you really like it?”
“Yes, these irises look like they’re flying”
“Then it’s yours...”
“But...”
“Isn’t it your birthday in a few days?”
(Sure it was his birthday, but it seemed too much to Guido. Luckily he knew exactly how to pay him back: just invite Tonino for lunch, the pasta and beans with maltagliati his wife made was his favorite dish)
(So flying irises in exchange for pasta and beans, what a fabulous exchange)
6)
The most fascinating thing about Gottarelli is the infiltration between poetry and painting. Starting with the titles of the paintings, sometimes as beautiful as the paintings themselves, to his writings, a perfect passepartout to grasp the sense of pictorial work.
Titles like “To Amuse the Eyes”, “The Horizon is an Embroidery”, “Two Signals Keep Each Other Company”, “The Snow Calls the Colors”…
And phrases like:
“I found my paintings while walking”
“A little branch sticks out thoughtlessly from a large poplar and enjoys the quiver of a few leaves, lighter than a dream, crazier than the wind”
“The road sign emerged from the colored asphalt like a swan”
“The road as a cause, the horizon as an effect”
Yes, really those titles and those phrases from those paintings say it all. That’s why I think the curators' choice at the exhibition to alternate pictorial works with panels featuring his poetic pearls is excellent.
7)
And anyway…
If his words weren’t enough…
Ah, if they weren’t enough, I’ll tell you something…
How can I, though...
In Gottarelli's painting we find: a continuous reflection on nature, the total absence of the human figure, the dominance of the landscape...a representation that refuses the sublime and incorporates techniques like collage... the great expressionistic force of color… and, as Guido said, flowers that fly...
Noteworthy, as unexpected protagonists of his landscapes, are the asphalt of a curve, the light poles, the traffic signs, (the latter almost a trademark)
And I'll stop here, I won’t enter a territory that’s not mine…
8)
(A personal memory of mine)
About twenty years ago, more or less when I happened to discover his poems, my friends and I were making a little magazine.
Struck by a text of his on tourism in centimeters I gathered courage and went to his house to ask permission to publish it.
He was very kind, flicked through an issue of our magazine without much interest, gave me some of his books, and granted permission.
He seemed tired... and I don’t remember well what we talked about…
But one thing has stayed with me: “The world doesn’t exist anyway”, he told me…
That phrase of his and the tone of his voice made me think of “Antonia's Line” and Dito Storto, the philosopher...
9)
“Antonia's Line”
A room full of books, inside there’s an old sad-looking man (Dito Storto) and a little girl. Next scene: the little girl and the mother on horseback. The little girl, evidently influenced by the old man, says “isn’t it strange that nothing exists?” “That’s why there are so many things” replies the mother...
I don’t know, maybe it has nothing to do with it, but that's what came to mind…
And for me, Gottarelli is not just Dito Storto, for me, he’s also the mother.
Trallallà...
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