Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Genus Bononiae and Fondazione Carisbo, present in Bologna, at Palazzo Fava, until September 24, an important exhibition dedicated to Lucius Saffro (Trieste 1929 – Bologna 1998), scientist, artist, writer, poet, has lived in Bologna since 1945, the year he moved there with his family and has remained close to it, always considering it his hometown.
Graduated from the University of Bologna in pure physics, he has always been keen to develop his interests in art, philosophy and poetry. He exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Rome Quadrilateral and in many other famous exhibitions in Italy and abroad, gaining important international recognition for his work at the São Paulo Biennales in Brazil (1969), Rijeka (1970) and Kraków (1972). .
The exhibition itinerary is entitled “Journey into the Unknown. Lucio Savaro between Art and Science, curated by Claudio Ceretelli and Gisela Vismara, traces the main phases of the work of Savaro, an artist who cannot be traced back to a single style, nor can he be categorized as belonging to one artistic currents, almost single-handedly. It is a form, but an expression of a continuous inner search toward the infinite, supported by a speculative reflection of thought, between antiquity and the contemporary. As stated in the text written by J. Wismara in the catalog accompanying the exhibition: “We can therefore mention that the safari existential state is somewhat similar to the ‘ancient state of man alone’, which is admirable ‘fabula de lineis etFiguris’, as Barelli writes that he has always lived in a contemplative dimension permeated by ‘complete silence’. .
There are about a hundred works including paintings, drawings, and texts written by Savaro, which testify to the prolific and prominent literary and philosophical activity.
A comprehensive intellectual and artist, he was able to reconcile two seemingly distant worlds such as art and science in a strictly meditative way, making them a tool for the continuous search towards the infinite, or as stated in the title of the book. An exhibition into the unknown. In this regard, what was stated in the critical text presented by J. Of fundamental importance is Vismara accompanying the Argan-supported catalogue, which argued that Svaro’s “guiding goal, which he made ‘art as science’, was a metaphysical place, but rather the realization of a ‘logical place of their identity’; in this way, the artist did not practice ‘art for science’s sake’. nor science for art’s sake”, but simply, through his pictorial works, he practiced mathematics with painting, giving life to the continuation and transcendence of the discipline in the “other”.
The exhibition itinerary begins with works from the 1950s. The heroes are stylized figures, almost ghosts with turbulent air immersed in timeless environments where constructs are dry and basic: fantasy figures reminiscent of medieval knights, who fight with brushes rather than weapons.
Then we continue the works of the sixties, which marked the beginning of the dialogue between art and science. The protagonist is the perspective, through which Safaro organizes scenes, places objects, and prefers colors with clear backgrounds, which lead the viewer’s view towards new scenarios with an avant-garde flavor. Infinity and the labyrinth are some of the themes developed in this period.
But the search continued and the Trieste artist began to compose and study the many polyhedrons, dodecahedrons and tetrahedrons, which characterize the art of the seventies and show the relationship that Savaro has with antiquity, especially with the sixteenth century. Building polyhedrons is a way of constructing thought, continuing research, and giving it form, content, and structure. A continuous dialogue with mathematical laws that give shape to concrete but abstract structures, and foundations on which thought can be built in a continuous development and in a continuous flow.
The polyhedrons feature mainly blue backgrounds, which highlight the deep relationship Savaro has always maintained with his hometown, Trieste.
Claudio Ceretelli says in the text in the catalog: “The links with seascapes are ribbons of infinity immersed in contemplative silence, the unmistakable light of Trieste continues to traverse the memory associated with youthful acquaintances, as seen in the multiple echoes suggested by the clarity of celestial backgrounds.” .
Bruno d’Amore says in his catalog text, regarding polyhedra and Savaro’s relation to them: ‘This relation has always fascinated mathematicians and artists alike: it is an ancient subject, studied since from classical Hellas; But then they were magically illustrated during the late Middle Ages and throughout the Renaissance, for example by Leonardo in his famous illustrations of the book Divine Proportion by his friend, the monk mathematician Luca Pacioli. Many polyhedra (including the five regular ones) are drawn in both the “whole” and “skeletal” versions, as they are known. The giant Pierrot even writes A liplus de quinque corporibus Regularibus, in which he illustrates and studies, using completely perfect Euclidean tools, the five Platonic polyhedra and some of the semi-regular solids already reported by Archimedes but then forgotten over the centuries: the truncated tetrahedron and the cuboctahedron. On the other hand, we are in full recovery from Greek classicism. Albrecht Dürer studies the “truncation” of Platonic polyhedra. In his four-chapter treatise on geometry, he also presents a (non-trivial) development of the flat cube; He also paints it in cameos depression. Let’s not forget the mosaic representing a starry polyhedron in the Archimedean style of Paolo Uccello in Venice. So the representation of polyhedrons is very present in the Renaissance, a historical and cultural period that Lucio loved. …with the extraordinary work of Lucio, Renaissance figurative mathematical studies are brought back to life! Thanks to his unique ability in the world to master both sides of these subjects, technical and mathematical, Lucio has been invited several times, myself too, to give lectures on the occasion of mathematics congresses, and not only in Italy, always eagerly awaited and with great applause.
The documentary shown on screen Lucius Saffro. Thought formsDirected by Giuseppe Beto Cohen in 2014, featuring novels by: Maurizio Calvesi, Flavio Caroli, Federico Carpi, Claudio Ceretelli, Bruno D’Amore, Michele Emmer, Bergiorgio Odifridi, Riccardo Sanchini, Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, Walter Tiga and Gisella Vismara.
A catalog is available to accompany the exhibition, published by Bologna University Press, and contains the critical contributions of Gisela Vismara (scientific advisor to the Savaro Foundation), Bruno d’Amore (art critic and mathematician) and Claudio Ceretelli (former professor of art history at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts).
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