Simona Weller: Painting with Words

"Painting with words" is for Simona Weller not merely an aphorism, it is, in fact, the exact explanation of how an intellectual situation is translated into reality; it is the cross reference to a series of backwashes which, apart from all the possible historical precedents (for example Apollinaire, Futurism, Dadaism) propose covert or indirect references by means of an almost symbiotic co-habitation of a series of words with the images they suggest. This kind of communication appears, therefore, to be somewhat ambiguous and provoking because it suggests a temporary relationship between two different dimensions - one verbal (and therefore synthetic) and the other figurative (and therefore analytic), in which however it is not necessarily the linguistic structure, which prevails upon the literary elements, involved.
Without referring to psychoanalytical myths (that in any case are typical of so much of this period's critical work), I believe that an analysis of this young painter's work must be attempted by means of a much simpler method - in other words, it is necessary to return to the moment when "words" and "painting" become "one" in her imagination and where her force of perception gives life to an original psychological germ, and transforms this into a basis for discussion and confrontation. One could even hypothesize that there is a direct connection between the darkest and deepest recesses of those half hidden ferments of the mind (memories long forgotten or an archaic childhood) of real attempts to rediscover a world where fantasy and reality are one.

At the same time, a purely historical approach (which I prefer) would appear to be indicated for a style of painting which, while describing ordinary and metaphorical themes, sees these quite clearly as essential emblems of "Being".

This research automatically leads us to an analysis of the artist's earlier investigations, that is to say of those vaguely surreal elements that have been constant in her work for many years and that follow the pathway traced by Ernst-Matta-Sutherland (pathway accurately described by Cesare Vivaldi1). In fact, Weller's re-elaboration of data from the real world into re-proposals by means of symbols and allusions, through syntheses and extrapolations, remains her unique constant, which today, too, seems to characterize her work.

The magical significance enclosed within her spelling of her pictorial language is the dominating factor of her work, covering everything with a nostalgic desire for simplicity, a desire that becomes slowly visible not just with one's imagination but in a more tangible way, in a way that catalyses the signs of Nature and marks the cycle of Life. If knowledge is the means whereby each man underlines - in a given historical moment - the problem of existence and of becoming, then Simona Weller, with a sympathetic method (sympathy used in the Greek sense, i.e. concord, harmony, or "to feel with") demonstrates how the mediation of her traced line does not resolve, sic et simpliciter, the need to illustrate totally the entire significance of one's art, but rather suggests the necessity to investigate the use and function of significance. The artist must therefore follow a practical and mental process in which - through more or less obvious semantic connections - text and imagery solicit the use of a language, which is closely tied to the most secret recesses, and motivations of his/her creativity.
When Federica Di Castro states that in these pictures "words" have been transformed into "a harmonic amalgam of rhythms, signs, signals, transcriptions, errors, and memory", or even more simply, into "a projection of the soul into canvas" she is, in effect, underlining how the reference points - orthographic or not - multiply their incidence and are capable of highlighting the sentimental and instinctive aspects of the work. Reflections from various cultural influences - ranging from post-impressionistic colours3 to systematic organisation of the contents4 and to a profound introspection5 attract the observer to an apparently romantic atmosphere in which the intensity of communication is conveyed by means of the subtle and penetrating balance between colours and lines.

Various urgent problems arise when we observe the recent production of this painter, not the least of these is that of the use of a compositional freedom which now appears in many aspects of her work; these are never incoherent in the eurhythmic development used and these aspects appear to determine the tempo of the reading and to solicit (as if this were essential) the pauses and reflections that arise from this. It is sufficient to understand how the warp and weave of her lines move, in order to understand the secret connections between her thoughts, the grammatical and syntactical notes, that network which forces the primeval elements into a free-play context within a continuum in space and time, fascinating and provocative at the same time.

A full -and occasionally solemn- breath emerges symmetrically with the growth and development of the colours on the canvas, and this breath moves them in different ways and forces them to impress a sinuous line, full of dramatic content.

Tommaso Trini is quite correct when he observes how Weller's "writing in colours" overlaps between the "horizontal rhythms of a speckled grid" and that this is necessary in order to exalt "the sensitive tones of her relationship with Nature". Nevertheless, I think it is important to point out how the use of the "lemma", transformed from concept into line, brings us to an harmonic destructuring of the word, which though will continue to exist as a loudspeaker for psychological vibrations, whose evocative powers leave the observer with a need to make considerations upon the multiple explicit and implicit implications contained in Weller's works.

I do not think that Weller's chromatic pulsations are declined in a "feminine way", as held by Marisa Vescovo. If, however, with this "expression" she intended to imply a certain kind of sensitivity, a happy gracefulness of imagination, and an individual system of organisation that brings into the foreground the almost musical nature of Weller's paintings, and a similar "expression" to describe the transfer of certain intimate thoughts into intellectual expressions, thoughts and tensions which convey simple linguistic units with a feminine quality, then I could agree with the definition as such, because in this way Weller transfers an ideological and cultural privacy onto canvas, finalizing certain logical and iconoclastical connotations, whose verbal-visual representations are in fact the central core of her artistic discourse.
Ten years of painting, from 1970 to 1979, represent a long period that, at the same time, is quite sufficient to clarify the motivations that have guided this Roman born artist towards a continuous refinement of the instruments for her individual style of painting.
In Dieci Anni (Ten Years), painted in 1970, a hypothetical free space is left to develop in much the same way as a school copybook would, and is rich with transitional densities that change according to the unchangeable rules of a primordial systematic reasoning.
In Ciao, burattino (Hi, puppet) of 1971, the structure would appear to support a phoneme that is only slightly reinforced by a characterisation of the design that underlines the difference between reading and seeing.

In Con la parola erba (With the word grass) of 1972, thanks to a rhythmic superimposition of a series of letters, the writing space opens up a large figurative area, whose breadth clamours for visual independence. Again, in Tessitura per la parola erba (Weaving with the word grass) distinctive tracts would appear to be necessary in order to underline the subordinate personality of the written word in relation to the "de-semantication" of words. Here, the progressively mutual inter-relationships of the linguistic and the pictorial codes become complementary to each other within the central theme of intellectual contents. In canvasses such as Un campo di grano con volo di corvi (A wheat field with flying crows) the graphics used would appear to be all absorbing were it not for the fact that the words are almost completely disarticulated and from this "decompositional" style a process of communication is born. The same phenomenon is found in other works of this period, and the following years, where the linguistic space, (apparently overtaken by the disappearance of the words) would still appear to be the essential structure. This structure is created with the use of paint-smudges, and the rhythm between these facilitates the vision of a multitude of chromatic tones and of the disintegration of colour to create meaningful refrains whose meaning would otherwise stay hidden.

Tessere un mare viola (To weave a Violet Sea) transforms the text into real graphic warps and weaves and demonstrates that the technique used to "decompose" is as important as the composition of the writing itself.

This present analysis would be incomplete without an observation on the developments discovered in later works. Of particular interest is Parole controluce (Words against the light) a mixed technique in collage and tempera on paper (1979), and part of the even larger work Diario al muro (Diary on the wall) in which certain almost plastic elements are involved.

Un colore per ogni ora (A colour for every Hour), also from 1979, uses pigment as a graphic element, in imitation of language that goes beyond conventionality in the use of line and sign and is a rather conceptual research carried to extremes, whose and echoes are also found in Quando in Primavera (When in Spring) or in the two pastel and tempera works (also from 1979) Vento nell'erba (Wind in the Grass) and Fuoco nell'erba (Fire in the Grass).

The most interesting discoveries are to be found in the artists most recent work; for example in L'abolizione della realtà (Abolition of Reality) because of the pleasant interchange of artistic enunciations and of the nostalgic quality assumed by the painting, a reality that forces the observer to think about the physical nature of intention which has developed from the original reality of a mental process.

In describing her recent research in a recent letter8, Simona Weller talks of the "return of figurative elements", of "readable letters alternated with undeciphered words", of "threads of images that grow into words", and of "words that change into threads of imagination", of "a sort of coded cipher of the unconscious mind", whose archetypes are attracted by "great paintings" and by "great poetry". It is not easy to decipher the ambiguity hidden in these works, but it would appear legitimate to ask ourselves if any critical knowledge could define the limits of any system, reducing creativity to a mere longing for things of the past, to suggestions for how one could read, to the necessary interpretation of a poetry which goes beyond simple appearance, to observe and understand not only the architectonic or compositional values but, above all, an the musical and pictorial possibilities.

Roland Barthes10 writes that "an image on its own does not by itself invent imagination, but imagination cannot be described without that image, even if it's a small and lonely image".

In her extrapolations, Simona Weller uses a grammar made up of elementary signs and colours, which gives the due support to an eloquent and see-through way of communicating, whose ductility brings to life the formality required in a painting and, even more than that, shows us a personal style of writing that seems to bridge the gap between painting and literature. As Oscar Wilde observed in the preface to The Portrait of Dorian Gray the chosen are those "to whom beautiful things mean only beauty".
For those of us who, like you and me, were born in more tragic times, these "beautiful things" have assumed an existential importance, a final, extreme vision of the "art-life" principle, - i.e. a fact that binds together illusion and reality. Instead, for the young Roman painter, "these things" are a luminous affirmation, a liberating analysis, a personal contribution to life in this society.

Macerata, May 1980