"Stepping out of the childhood of art"

When talking with friends about my works exposed at the Tenth Quadriennial exhibition, they said: "I liked that lawn? I was impressed by the blackboard? I liked the one that was all written on and then crossed out with those lightings and the word "RIFARE" (start over) at the end? I like the one that says crow in black and wheat in yellow and then the word crow ends on a light blue background that looks like water but instead it says sky, was it water or sky? Oh, see, I got it right! But how did you do the blackboard, with acrylics? The green one reminds me of a Divisionist Balla". I am not writing this last sentence for conceit, but because it is the sentence that most reflected my intentions.

When, a year ago, I presented my work in Rome with a written-painting exhibition born of a research on the mediums of expression of the childhood world, I could not imagine that I would have developed this modern, ironic and in a way desperate way to re-propose pure painting, derived from my starting over from the beginning, imitating my childhood creativity and almost as if I had never painted before.

Living inside culture is certainly very different than following ghosts and blooming about things in a place called Colle Nibbio; I had a chance to measure myself, to have some reference points, to choose what I thought was best for me. It is this way that, last summer, writing, writing, writing in Calice Ligure, I wrote wheat thinking of SEURAT, sea thinking of MONET, wheat thinking of Van Gogh.
I though didn't give up the children's blackboards, their notebooks, their freedom of invention, the taste of writing a scribbled word, mysterious and revealing at the same time, things that, for me, represented freedom in front of the canvas seen as a monster, the joy to finally have the courage to do what I had never had the courage to do: stop caring about the fine drawing, of the fine matter, of the fine painting.

This has been the time of the exercises, of the essays, of the blackboards of fast notes for the painting that I was doing right next to blackboard itself, a diptych or even a triptych (project, wrong painting, final painting) as if I wanted to postpone the my stepping out of the "childhood of art". The adult works followed immediately and naturally, and the "fine painting" exploded again as a passion developed among difficulties. So, the painting saying gras grass grass, with an overlapping writing, colour-light, of the Divisionist kind, looked like a lawn to many observers.
Right now I am already painting works which I wish were different.

The experience of the free sign, of the cathartic scribble is too present with a taste of nostalgia when I work frenetically and close to neurosis, so I write and cross out, cross out and write, because I hope this is my new means of feeling free in front of the joy of doing.

Rome, May 1973