Vedova Tintoretto

"I always identified with Tintoretto / All that space / so much happening. That / rhythmical staging / sincopated and sanguinary, / molten with energy / inner depths of passion / wrenching emotion. / Flashes of light / casting / cavernous shadows / pools of light and shade / shadows of plunging / precipitous depths. / An interrogative... / out of the fear / Tintoretto precipitates. / Frantic movement / unbearable breathlessness / soaring trajectories / flights / to where? / Theatres of swallowed dialogues / doused by swordbearing angels / voices bellowing in the depths / words of the mysteries / avenging God, / Moses, / the Virgin in the Garden, / headlong falls / abyssal bodies / perforating space. / The curtains / of a human being / ripped away. / Devastated / all but the end / little hope / cosmic sobs / convulse galaxies. The / landscape patterns / awful encounters / extreme terrors. / Nightmare / San Rocco’s / consuming cycles. / Allow no peace / The space for oppression / oppressors. Shattered by the other ‘other’. / What was possible / in the balance – gone. / The One True God / as protagonist / quotidian interiors – / the nativities are literally / violated by / cosmic incursions / zig zag scorings – / restlessly / writing out / neuroses / everything comes down to / demented / writing / ceaseless flow / of oppositions / in the nightscape / phantoms space / of nightmare – the maestro / Tintoretto overcome by / the notion of the gravity – of / a day – / the norms of the universe / shredded blown up / and we are always / already in the / aftershock…"
These jottings of Emilio Vedova date from 1991, with the artist recalling the inspiration he derived from his strong identification with Jacopo Robusti. They were first published in the catalogue published by Marsilio on the occasion of the “Vedova Tintoretto” exhibition mounted in the halls of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Accompanied by historical/critical contributions by Alfredo Bianchini, Stefano Cecchetto, Germano Celant, Fabrizio Gazzarri, Franco Posocco and Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa, a generous illustrated apparatus proposed numerous parallels between the works of the two masters, many on show in the exhibition, demonstrating to the reader-viewer how the ‘Vedovan gaze’ was shot through, from his first works, with an enormous admiration for the earlier Venetian’s achievement, whether in the huge canvases at San Rocco or in his many paintings specifically designed for other sites in the city. We understand the modern artist’s profound study of Tintoretto’s conception of space, his appreciation of his predecessor’s rapid and dramatic line. As Germano Celant – co-editor, with Stefano Cecchetto, of the book – writes in his essay: “The transmission of Tintoretto’s chromatic intuition to Vedova is effected through qualities they have in common, their passion and fury, their relationship with their city, their restless daemons, their forward-looking outward vision, their inner solidity, their drive to open out their art to the breadth and uniqueness of a solitude that ‘expands the powers of the mind and pushes them to the point of eruption’”.

Vedova Tintoretto
Curated by
Germano Celant con Stefano Cecchetto

Edited by Marsilio, Venezia
2013

Language: Italian
Format: 23,5 x 28 cm
Pages: 184
Price: 40 euro