Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 2009

The list of selected paintings has just been published. I scroll down... and here's my name !
I am so happy to have made the selection again. Every time that I take part into juried shows it's an agony. One brings his works at the venue and you find yourself in a queue. This year the place where the selection took place was a large hall in Kensington. I arrived on the morning of the first day: paintings were placed on the floor all along the walls, and my pictures were already in the third row.
Looking at the list of entries I can't fail to notice that the numbers go up to 1195.
I was confident about the work I submitted, but there is always a doubt on whether the judges will take the time to look carefully, come close, really close. Among more than a thousand works will they spot my rather small portrait?
It seems like they did this time, but still I think that it is not fair for one's own painting to throw them in the arena like this, and I will only take part to one juried show next year.
Please do take the time to look closely at the painting by visiting my website page and clicking on the picture for a high resolution image.

Following Piero della Francesca/detour

From Sansepolcro we headed toward Citta' di Castello, further down along the Tiber valley. There isn't any painting by Piero there, but two interesting museums devoted to Alberto Burri.
Burri is a painter and sculptor who died in 1995. Originally a physician who took part in WW II, he started to paint during his time as a POW in the States.
His paintings were made with different materials of which he highlighted the qualities.



He sewed and painted on raw canvas, he etched and combusted wood, ignited cellophane etc. In the series "Cretti" he explored the texture of dry clay grounds.




The latest works have a smooth surface and are more about design and interaction of shapes and colours.






Burri has two dedicated museums in Citta' di Castello. One is in town housed in the historical Palazzo Albizzini.
The Albizzini family had a dedicated chapel in the church of San Francesco. It is here where the Sposalizio della Vergine by Raffaello was originally located. Raffaello's painting is now in the core room of the Accademia di Brera in Milan, where it hangs literally side to side with Piero's Madonna and Child with Saints ( I was there earlier this year).




The first museum holds a selection of pieces by Burri displayed chronologically.
The most striking place to visit though is the second center belonging to the Fondazione Burri. The building is a former tobacco drying plant. I think it is the largest space ever dedicated to a single artist in the world: 7500 sqm, it is simply huge. A part was given to Burri for free in 1978, and it is now completely occupied by his work.
His paintings, seen in the monumental and austere industrial setting, acquire an impressive status and a strong spirituality.



Somehow the visit to Burri's museums fit in with Piero. His geometry, his attention to the design and partition of the canvas, his earthy colours, golds and vivid reds resonate of Piero's works.

Next stop, Urbino.

Following Piero della Francesca

This summer I had the chance to go on a two days trip to see Piero's works. Many of them are condensed in a small area in the center of Italy, around his birthplace, Sansepolcro.
I started from Arezzo, where I visited the frescos from the Legend of the Cross and the Santa Maria Maddalena in the Duomo.



I love this small fresco, and since I first saw it I always thought she is a very good depiction of modern Italy. There's the beauty, that special italian light and the melancholic feeling when we remember of what our nation was and could have been if it wasn't inhabited by so may hopelessly inadequate people. Not to speak about Maddalena's former job.




After Arezzo we went to Monterchi, birthplace of Piero's mother, where we admired the Madonna del Parto. After the ambitious monumentality of the frescos this tender and smaller work set in the tiniest village is heart breaking. I love the recycling of the cartoon: use it once, then turn it round and trace the other angel ! Oh, and remember to shift the colours. It's so wonderfully naive and yet the result is elegant and balanced.



The next stop was Sansepolcro, a small town at the bottom of the Tiber valley. Piero's house is here ( it now houses a foundation in his name). Luca Pacioli, an important mathematician, was also born here. Piero was his first teacher.

"The majority of the second volume of Pacioli's Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita was a slightly rewritten version of one of Piero della Francesca's works. The third volume of Pacioli's De divina proportione was an Italian translation of Piero della Francesca's Latin writings On [the] Five Regular Solids. In neither case, did Pacioli include an attribution to Piero. He was severely criticized for this and accused of plagiarism by sixteenth-century art historian and biographer Giorgio Vasari. R. Emmett Taylor (1889–1956) said that Pacioli may have had nothing to do with the translated volume De divina proportione, and that it may just have been appended to his work. However, no such defence can be presented concerning the inclusion of Piero della Francesca's material in Pacioli's Summa."



In the Museo Civico of Sansepolcro I saw four works by Pietro. The Polittico della Madonna, San Giuliano, San Lodovico and the Resurrection. There also is the polyptic in which the National Gallery's Baptism of Christ was originally placed.
I cannot say how many layers the Resurrection is made of. The composition, the expression of Christ, the landscape. It is a painting you can watch for ever and find new meanings every time.
The philosopher Massimo Cacciari wrote a short essay on it where he makes some very deep consideration. He points out how there is a division between the divine world and the mortal world, crammed with the soldiers' figures. There is no reference to death in this painting, but nothing points to life either. The land is hard, no flowers or signs of spring, but a land on which foundations can be laid. Christ is logos, his name has to be spoken with sobriety, with clarity of design, a purity of form and a direct, unflinching look. Christ is alone, he is wearing the red cloak of victory, but seems ready to take on other burdens. Never has the Verbum been preached more strongly than by this silent figure, says Cacciari.

In the next post my travel continues to Urbino and Perugia, passing by Citta' di Castello.