© Lorenzo Puglisi 2024
lorenzopuglisi27@yahoo.it
Bruno Corà: Let’s give an immediate orientation to our readers. How did your painting experience start?
Lorenzo Puglisi: It all started from drawing: when I was young, until the age of twenty, I drew in pencil and I was interested in it, I had the desire to capture what was around me. Then it took quite a lot of time to find the courage to try and paint.
B.C. But what was drawing for you: a simple technique to outline things or a system of thought?
L.P. It allowed me to enjoy the moment, I enjoyed the moment when the pen or the pencil slides on the paper, captures a face, or catches a space or a small place, as if it were a way to possess things better: this was the desire which I remember clearly. But then I’ve given up drawing... Painting has started slowly, first with a base, then, gradually, with a manipulation that started from nothing, directly on the background of the canvas.
B.C. What is your idea of painting? Has it always to be something that takes place on the canvas or may it be a logic of thought? A system that can use different means from the brush and the canvas to be developed? What idea do you have of painting in general?
L.P. In my most practical experience there is the surface of the canvas, and that’s because I am very cautious, as I said before. But I think that what counts is to succeed in some way, I would say mysterious, at least un- known to me, in capturing on the canvas some particles of life, and this can be done on the canvas or with a myriad of other means. Let’s say that it is now easy for me to find myself on the canvas, I consider it as the ring where to face myself, I would say... Because capturing the existence, proposing a meaningful vision of reality is extremely difficult. I try and limit the possibilities, be- cause otherwise I would disperse myself completely... That’s how I feel about it at the moment.
B.C. You have defined the canvas as a ring where to look for yourself, but it is obvious that a real fight takes place on this ring. What kind of individual truth have you identified in the quest of yourself? What do you want to achieve?
L.P. I must say that at first and for a long time all that happened was not very conscious... There is some sort of unconsciousness in which the action takes place and I assist, follow, try to govern, to let go of it... A kind of mix to be explored during the moment when this occur, so at the beginning there was not really a direction. Then slowly I started to recognize, as I tried to depict portraits, faces, heads, figures, I began to recognize a series of inner impulses, flowing thoughts, emotions that are aroused... all this happened while the painting was fixed on the canvas or perhaps more honestly I have to say that I recognized this in retrospect, not instantly. And looking back at the works after a certain lapse of time, I recognized a sort of snapshot of myself – and then also of the other human beings, because, deeply, I believe that we are all equal... And you know, the more sincere this attempt is, the more it is likely to capture something... I stop when I see that there is a bit of life, even a small spark... If by looking back at the picture there is something that touches me, then the goal has been reached.
B.C. So you are introducing the figure aspect, because you talked about the face, you spoke of presence... Is painting for you almost exclusively evocative of the anthropological di- mension, or can it also be the vehicle of something going beyond man?
L.P. Absolutely yes: it is something very am- bitious, which could sound also presumptuous... But if one is touched by, then there is something that can be reached... if one can create a bit of inner space, leaving oneself aside for a moment and looking for something that... It is an ambition, a direction, it is a point of arrival, it is not what I believe to get today; but the purpose should be to make the observer feel the presence that one can feel naturally looking at trees, at animals, at human beings... sometimes we are able to, at least I am able to, feel... the presence of some force, an energy... that raises a big question about the mystery of why we are here... The light, in the darkness, is something that begins to appear shyly out of nothing – this nothing is my condition.
B.C. Trying to get more deeply into your way of expression through painting, I ask you: a presence, an identity at first seem to emerge from the dark background. It could also be a self-portrait or an ideal portrait, a portrait made as freely as possible; therefore you place human identity, anthropology, at the centre of the meditation about space - time. Which was the artist who, in some way, accompanied you before you reached your code?
L.P. There have been many... I was very touched by the question of darkness in seventeenth century painting, in some Rembrandt’s portraits and self-portraits: these figures so alive, so real, shrouded in the darkness as in the portrait of Jan Six. I recognized a certain kind of strong feeling towards some painters in history, such as Goya; then Cézanne’s work, with its great life, perceptible, palpable, and also the work of the Impressionists, of Monet... Picasso’s expressive force, these gestures so simple, so basic, that brought painting to a simplicity too often misunderstood, where actually a shocking amount of truth and life hides... Then Francis Bacon, the last great painter of the recent past, in my opinion, whose works are full of elements of historicity and by whom I am seduced; I appreciate his remarkable ability to merge all the painting knowledge in a force of the moment, as all the great painters of the past did, managing to get what was their attempt to live in the present. Above them all, however, I would not forget Leonardo da Vinci, for me the greatest painter of all times; although he has created very few works, he has left something... there is a deep message of a higher nature... I think of his St. John the Baptist... Sure, what I say is very superficial, but these are the references for me, and they are mainly visual; it is difficult to put into words all this incredible world that was synthesized by the great art of the past... I feel I am very far from all this.
B.C. Among the painters you have mentioned in your current lexicon, those who have made a great use of chiaroscuro, such as Rembrandt and Leonardo, Goya and Bacon, are certainly the most prominent; however, you often focus this modality onto the face rather than the body, while the other painters have also done a lot of work about the body. Why your main interest for the face and not the body?
L.P. I would say now, just now, mainly because the face is the most expressive part of interiority and the deepest motion of human nature. Hands also express a lot, in fact in some works I try to portray, to paint the hands, with their motility, their life... But the face is the part that strikes me most in a human being, this whole expression and strength... The body, well, maybe I feel very distant from it, maybe I feel I am a very cerebral person.
B.C. As we know, painting in the 20th century was not only figuration, it was also abstraction, it was thought, it was carried out with other patterns, other conceptions, while you basically prefer the figurative one. Which are the reasons of your choice?
L.P. I really appreciate, for example, a certain kind of work that has been done: Mondrian’s work immediately comes to my mind, he slowly reduced an image until it became extremely essential and geometric... I appreciate all this, however, my thought... Sometimes I see a stain on a wall, something that nature has built up and yet if that spot has the shape of a head, I do not know why but I’m more interested, it touches me, it moves me... as if I could recognize myself more easily in this whole that surrounds us; for example I am much more distressed in dealing with adult human beings than I am with an animal or a child, which are closer to nature... I think that recognizing myself is important, has always fascinated me, even in the stones, when something accidentally reminds me of myself, reminds me of my existence...
B.C. Clear. Now, however, there is one point we have to deal with: painting, which you talked about from the point of view of your interests, has provided a range of outcomes such as Rembrandt’s, such as Cézanne’s or Monet’s, Goya’s, Bacon’s and so on until today. Now the question is how do you think to bring about your contribution to this language transformation in a clearer way, since those models have already been in some way recognized? How will you act?
L.P. I find myself today at this crucial point and I think that there are many possible directions; what I have done so far has reduced everything to an extreme essentiality and I feel I am at a turning point; I am trying, after a very interesting conversation with you, to overlap a darkness to a darkness, exploiting in an extreme way this mysterious tool that fascinates me so much, also on the structure of the face; this is in today’s practice... In general, the best thing I can do is to start all over again, closing a period... and this will happen, it will not be an instant decision, but will be perfected through a working path, through a long process;
I think I will be able, with a little luck, a little stubbornness, to come to something else... surely it is necessary.
B.C. The darkness you speak of is a very sought after dimension nowadays, we are facing an era in which quantum physics tells us about black holes, about the dark substance, the black energy and then about the fact that there is a large part of the universe that we do not know; paradoxically, this can be useful for a meditation about the space in painting, in your case a painting coming out of the darkness, out of the gloom. It would be interesting to ponder the rela- tionship with science, the dark dimension related to the pictorial space.
L.P. Surely, because painting – but I don’t know if this is my case – could be used as a tool to learn, to know reality better. I have read that there are many philosophies speaking of the fact that man searches the immensity of the outer space when the great truths of the cosmos, the great mysteries of existence are enclosed in him... Science, then, seen as an attempt to know... And now I get back once again to Leonardo, whose work and personality are almost unknown to me, since I can only sense at times, perceive... With him, we get back to this unknown energy, to this link between science and art, because the great art – and I am thinking of the pyramids, of creations that have been made in the past and which suggest a different quality of man – is linked with mathematical laws; the scientific matter is definitely connected with art... for example the golden section, or very precise links inside nature and in the human being, quantifiable in terms of numbers, but all this is beyond my understanding.
On the other hand, I do not forget in my vision, that I try to keep as simple as possible, Lascaux caves or other places where have been discovered the first human attempts to portray reality. I don’t forget either the strong thought of Picasso, thinking of painting as an exorcism, as a way to defeat, to try and address and overcome the fear of existence; in the case of the caves, it was clear, so they say at least, that there was a symbolical attempt to possess the prey before fighting with it, putting one’s life at stake... Some sort of knowing what lies ahead, then;
in my case I would like to know what surrounds me, what I am...
B.C. What you don’t know...
L.P. What I do not know, certainly...
B.C. I think this is the way. Now it’s the work’s turn, training these perceptions is necessary... Obviously, from painting to painting, we’ll see what happens.
L.P. Yes, this is the right path...
Bruno Corà (Rome, 1942) is a critic, art historian and university professor. Director of museums such as the Art Museum of the City of Lugano, the Pecci Museum in Prato, the CAMEC Modern Art Center in La Spezia, he has curated exhibitions and publications for artists such as Burri, Fontana, Manzoni, Richter, Baselitz, Kounellis, Merz, Gormley, Fabro, Boetti, Kiefer, Spagnulo and many others. He is president of the Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri Città di Castello Foundation.
Bruno Corà (2013)
A talk between Bruno Corà and Lorenzo Puglisi