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11/20/2007: "My early drawings" by Alberto Sughi
At my last exhibition in Rome, Professore Arturo Carlo Quintavalle persuaded me to show a large selection of drawings I never presented in public before.I was'nt sure about this decision since the drawings in question dated back to the mid 1940s' in other words back to an age before I became (I think) a painter. Now that that choice has been made, and since I firmly believe that when I write I am at my very best when I talk about my works, let me talk about those early drawings. As in my next blog I will talk, probably with more confidence, about later paintings.
(PS
Before starting this blog let me say a big thanks to our friend Andrew and my son Mario for helping me out in the task of replying to my last blog's comments. Thanks!)
More than a real album of drawings this was rather a series of individual sketches that my sister Leda brought me from the agricultural consortium where she was employed. They were actually bills, or receipts, that I used on the blank side to make the sketches. I had a passion for drawing, so she brought me the paper. I have always drawn, ever since I was a child. I sketched my first two drawings, I believe, when I was seven or eight years old and, unlike the drawings that most children make, they portrayed two old men in 'tapparella', that is, wearing overcoats and sticks. I watched them from the garden of my house as they climbed toward the Abbey on the mountain to eat a simple meal with the monks. My mother folded them and put them in her bag, perhaps imagining that she had discovered a talent in her child. Those drawings certainly made a strong impression on her.
When I made the other drawings, in 1943, I was about 15 years old. The whole series dates from when I was about 14 to 16 years old. After that, I kept on drawing on sheets of paper and typing paper, and I continued to go around with a notepad for years, as painters did in those days. Then the subject-matter changed. While my attention was first drawn to what I saw, it then changed when I started to understand something about art, glancing through catalogues belonging to my uncle, who was a painter. These were catalogues from the Biennale exhibition in Venice or the Roman Quadriennale. Here I discovered Rosai, Sironi, Fattori, Degas and saw the world through their eyes. Then everything changed again. I came into contact with the Romans, especially with Muccini, and I had other stimuli and interests, and became immersed in the problems of painting. There are also strange connections between my 'popularesque' works and compositions that are almost abstract.
Some of my drawings, if it wasn't for mere hints of human forms, could pass for abstract works. Young people come into contact with different things, quickly learning how to capture the significance of a look, to observe, catalogue, and compose. Perhaps what seems to emerge from these beginnings is that, despite this to-ing and fro-ing from one thing to another, as a young man should, there is always the same 'tension', and you can see that these are all my drawings. This means that, on the one hand, you gain technical skill, your ability as a draughtsman becomes sharper, and on the other, that the image itself takes shape, what I call, in a rather archaic way, the poetic world of an artist, which he feels imprecisely, but very strongly, within himself. If you observe these drawings, they are partly influenced by Mondrian, and partly by Masaccio. This might seem foolish, but it isn't. I say Masaccio because the figures are placed among houses, in squares, in the centre of the composition, and this is Longhi's idea in the critique that I had read, entitled Fatti di Masolino e Masaccio. Longhi says that Masaccio plants a nail in the wall and his figures are placed in perspective, while in Masolino everything is still flat. On the other hand, in my drawings there is a geometrical way of composing, with rhythmically spaced rays of light and subject-matter in an almost abstract style.
The 1951-52 drawings are quite different. I was more skilled in creating them, but even here there is a moment of artistic development. They are not drawings taken from life, but are imaginary. I wanted to portray the sense of light, space and movement. I wanted to experiment. In other cases there are sketches taken from life, such as the one with the lizard in the foreground, from 1951, which was perhaps inspired by Dùrer."Alberto Sughi
(translated by Joelle Crowle)
For more info on Alberto Sughi see. www.albertosughi.com
