Salvatore Emblema Terzigno, 1929-2006

Works in public collections:

Galleria degli Uffizi, Firenze (Italia) Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (U.S.) Museum Bojmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (NL) Ludwig Museum, Koblenz (DE) Università Normale, Pisa (Italia) Museo del 9cento Castel Sant’Elmo, Napoli (Italia) Museo Bargellini, Pieve di Cento (Italia)

Works in private collections (selection)

David Rockfeller Collection, New York Collezione Alfonso Perez y Perez, Ciudad de Mexico Collezione Gianni Agnelli, Torino Collezione Amnon Barzel, Tel Aviv Collezione Dino De Laurentis, Roma/Los Angeles Collezione Elmar Zorn, Munich Collezione Giulio Carlo Argan, Roma/Torino Collezione Carlo Levi, Roma Collezione Gennaro Moccia, Roma Collezione Mario Sonnino, Roma Collezione Principessa Maria Camilla Pallavicini, Roma Collezione Giorgio Preziosi, Genova Collezione Kelly Merrymen, Los Angeles Collezione Monsignor Angelo Francia, Città del Vaticano Collezione Ursel Steinecker, Koblenz Collezione Daniéle Perrier, Bad Ems Collezione Ferruccio Bonetti, Torino Collezione Pasquale Isidoro, Roma Collezione Alberto Finestauri, Roma Collezione Elena Pugliese, Torino Collezione Carlo Bisogniero, Washington Collezione Fondo d’Arte Biosana/Svas, Napoli Collezione Sandro Dorna, Torino Collezione Edoardo Palumbo, Napoli Collezione Cupini - De Filippo, Roma Collezione Gennaro Nappo, Napoli Collezione Fondo P.C.I., varie sedi in Italia Collezione Cynthia e Renato Penna, Napoli Collezione Remo Missori, Roma Collezione Alberto di Mauro, Los Angeles Collezione Sandro Bosi, Roma/New York Collezione Ugo Moretti, Roma Collezione Li Mollet, Bern Collezione Alejandra Kieffer, Munich Collezione Paulo Herkenhoff, Rio de Janeiro Collezione Maria Kreuz, Koln Collezione Silvia Franchi, Roma Collezione Luciano Caramel, Como Collezione Cleto e Dino Polcina, Roma Collezione Barbara Vergnano, Milano Collezione Jimmy Traboulsi New York Collezione Marcello Silva, Roma/Montecarlo Collezione Maurizio Calvesi, Roma

Exhibitions

(P )solo show (C) group show

1952 Napoli- Galleria al Blu di Prussia (c) 1993 Ischia – Castello Aragonese (c) 1954 Roma - Galleria San Marco (P) 1994 Milano – Arte Borgogna (P) 1956 Roma - Galleria La Vetrina di Chiurazzi (P) 1994 Comune di Milano – Mostra di sculture Via della Spiga (P) 1956 Roma - Galleria Il Camino (P) 1994 Roma – Galleria Banchi Nuovi (P) 1961 Napoli – Circolo nautico Posillipo (c) 1995 Salerno – Galleria Il Ponte (P) 1962 Roma - Galleria San Marco (P) 1996 Ravello – Villa Rufolo / Chiesa di Santa Maria a Gradillo 1963 Napoli - Galleria Tanino Chiurazzi (P) 1965 Roma – Galleria San Marco (p) 1997 Ascoli Piceno – Palazzo Dei Capitani (P) 1967 Napoli – Foyer Teatro Mercadante (P) 1997 Schwaz - Rabalder Haus Museum “Kunstler in Italien seit 1969 Aulla – Premio Città di Aulla (c) 1945” (c) 1971 Milano – Galleria Borgonuovo(P) 2001 Vicenza – Basilica Palladiana (P) 1972 Roma – Galleria Arti Visive (P) 2002 Salerno - Tempio di Pomona (c) 1972 Salerno – Galleria La Seggiola (P) 2001 Salerno – Studio Ruggiero (P) 1972 Napoli – Galleria Diagramma 32 (P) 2001 Siracusa - SEPRS (c) 1973 Torino – Galleria Christian Stain (P) 2002 Monaco - Kunsthaus “Vulcanik” (c) 1974 Napoli – Galleria San Carlo (P) 2003 Arezzo Galleria Pinacoteca Comunale“Da Picasso a 1975 Roma – X Quadriennale d’arte (c) Botero” (C) 1976 Bari - Expoarte (c) 2004 Benevento – Museo del Sannio (P) 1977 Termoli - Galleria Civica d’arte Moderna (P) 2004 San Paolo del Brasile – M.A.C. (P) 1978 Roma – Galleria Lastaria (P) 2005 Rio de Janeiro – Museu Nacional de Belas Artes(P) 1978 Milano – Galleria Morone (P) 2005 Città del Messico – Museo de la S.H.C.P. (P) 1979 Trieste – Galleria Forum (P) 2005 Aichi - Expo universale Padiglione Italia (Sala Personale) 1979 Ferrara – Palazzo dei Diamanti (P) 2005 Bologna - Galleria Artsinergy (P) 1979 Napoli – Museo Villa Pignatelli (P) 2005 - Galleria Artsinergy (P) 1979 Alessandria – Galleria Comunale (P) 2005 Pavia -Galleria Artsinergy (P) 1979 Roma – Galleria Rondanini ( P) 2005 Milano - Galleria Artsinergy (P) 1980 Venezia - Biennale Arti Visive/ Magazzini del sale (C) 2005 Aprilia - Galleria Artsinergy (P) 1981 Cesena – Galleria Pinacoteca Comunale (P) 2005 New York – Galleria Artsinergy (p) 1981 Napoli – Galleria San Carlo (c) 2006 Roma – Galleria Ulisse (P) 1980 Termoli – Galleria Civica d’arte Moderna (c) 2006 Chieti – Galleria Comunale “La Fiamma di Cristallo” (c) 1981 Roma – Palazzo delle Esposizioni “ Linee della Ricerca 2007 Valmontone Palazzo Doria Pamphilij (P) artistica in Italia 1960-1980” (c) 2008 Vicenza - Yvonne arte contemporanea (P) 1981 Firenze – Galleria degli Uffizi (C) 2008 Venezia -Palazzo Grassi “Italics” (c) 1982 Venezia – Biennale Arti Visive (sala personale) 2009 Venezia Biennale arti visive (sala personale Padiglione 1982 Pozzuoli – Scavi archeologici Terme Puteolane (P) Repubblica Araba di Siria) 1982 Rotterdam – Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (P) 2009 Chicago – MCA “Italics”( c) 1983 Napoli – Studio Miele (P) 2010 San Benedetto del Tronto - Galleria Artsinergy (P) 1984 Taormina – Pinacoteca Comunale/Chiesa di San 2010 Napoli Castel Sant’Elmo Museo del Novecento (c) Francesco (P) 2011 Napoli - Villa di Donato (c) 1985 Napoli – Palazzo Reale (P) 2011 Vicenza - Yvonne arte Contemporanea (P) 1985 Roma – Studio Due C (P) 2011 Napoli - Maschio Angioino (c) 1985 Milano – Arte Borgogna(P) 2012 Chicago - MCA “Language of Less / Then and Now” (c) 1985 Napoli – Studio 85 (P) 2012 Napoli - Spazio Nea (c) 1985 Genova – Galleria Cesarea (P) 2013 Los Angeles - IIC “Transparency” (P) 1985 Palermo – La Nuova Barcaccia (P) 2013 New York “Transparency/ The missing link in Italian post- 1985 Roma - Galleria Borghese “L’altra Faccia di Una Musa” war” (P) (c) 2014 Miami Art Wynwood (through David Richard Gallery) (c) 1987 Parma – Studio Nazzari (P) 2014 Santa Fe “Transparency/Through Color and Light” (P) 1987 Ercolano - Villa Campolieto (c) 2014 Napoli - Museo Pan (c) 1988 Caserta – Palazzo Belvedere di San Leucio “ Exvite” (c) 2014 Livorno – Galerie 21 (P) 1989 Benevento – Studio ErreCi (P) 2014 Miami - Art Miami (through David Richard Gallery) (c) 1990 Koblenz – Galleria Ursel Stainaker(P) 2015 Brescia - Galleria AB arte (c) 1990 Koblenz – Ludwig Museum(P) 2015 Milano - Expo Universale Padiglione Italia (c) 1993 Heimbach – Haus Schonblick (P) 2015 Spoleto – Palazzo Collicola Arti Visive (P)

Recent Bibliography:

“L’Arte Moderna Secondo Novecento” testo didattico di Giulio Carlo Argan e Lara Vinca Masini, Sansoni per la Scuola 2001 “DaPicasso a Botero” di Vittorio Sgarbi e Giovanni Faccenda, Torcular 2004 “Colore e Trasparenza” di Barzel, Maghallaes, Sgarbi, Torcular 2004 “Appartengo alla Luce” di Emanuele Leone Emblema, Iron Pruduction 2007

“Italics: Arte Italiana fra Tradizione e Rivoluzione” di Francesco Bonami, Electa 2009 “Emblema” Monografia in Occasione della 53° Biennale di Venezia AAVV 2009 “Museo del Novecento per una collezione in Progress” AAVV Electa 2010 “EmblemaTransparenza” di Emanuele Leone Emblema, Me? Editions 2011 “Transparency” di Peter Frank, Iemme edizioni 2013 “Nudaluce” di Gianluca Marziani, Iemme edizioni 2015

Chronology:

1929 Salvatore Emblema born on April his research. Emblema’s first stay 25th in Terzigno, to a family of small in the States is the occasion landowners of French heritage. of decisive encounters for his painting. However, the artist feels 1941-1948 New York like an alien territory. Graduates the Scuola del Corallo The difficult integration is enhanced in Torre del Greco and leaves family. by barriers and social language. He attends the Royal Academy of Arts but doesn’t complete his studies. 1958-1964 Makes a series of travels in Europe Back in , continues to work (France, England, Holland) until at Cinecittà for Dino De Laurentis settling in in the early 50's. Productions. Becomes assistant to Mario Chiari. Exhibits his works 1954-1956 in various Italian cities. Commissioned First solo exhibition at the Galleria by Dino de Laurentis to paint a nude San Marco in Rome is curated portrait of De Laurentis’ wife, actress by Neo-realist writers Ugo Moretti Silvana Mangano. He lives and Carlo Levi. The two intellectuals between Rome and Terzigno, come up with the image of the artistfarmer, and in the meantime his works are animated by genuine passion displayed in various places in Italy. and bucolic lyricism. A stereotype that will give him great success in 1965 the cultural Roman environment He flies to the United States pervaded by aesthetic neorealism, but for the second time. He meets that the artist feels as limiting. the historian Giulio Carlo Argan Starts work as an assistant set in New York. His trip is a tardive designer at the Cinecittà film studios. attempt to reconnect relationships One of his works, a portrait of Pope with the artistic environment Pius XII, made with dried leaves, is in New York, abruptly interrupted acquired by the Vatican Museums years before. Despite this, he returns collection. Marries Raffaela Auricchio to Italy some months later. in the Church of the Artists in Rome: his witnesses were Ugo Moretti and 1969 American philosopher James McAllen. Emblema establishes a relationship of deep esteem with Argan. 1957-1958 Aware of the lesson learnt in the On behalf of the invitation States and the intellectual debate of the magnate David Rockefeller, Argan addresses him to, he slowly who buys one of his works, Emblema starts focusing on the core elements flies to the United States. He moved in of his research. He starts his analysis 133 West 69 Street, as a guest on the concept of Transparency: of the musician Don Henry. He met the word coined by Giulio Carlo Argan Mark Rothko, which deeply influenced will be indissolubly linked to his art.

1971-1979 in New York in Terzigno. This is an extremely successful period. Solo exhibition curated 1990-2003 by Palma Buccarelli, Director of The cultural environment the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. in which Emblema is one of the Exhibits in Rotterdam, , Rome, major exponents, starts collapsing. Milan, Naples, Ferrara. In Naples, Two of his major supporters die: the exhibition at the Villa Pignatelli Giulio Carlo Argan and proves controversial with professors Palma Bucarelli. The gallery and students of the Academy of Fine in Rome he is linked to is involved Arts. The academic environment in some scandals. Emblema’s name accuses Emblema of being the is not frequently found in the Italian product of Argan’s heavy interference art chronicles. His works are displayed as well as (the political games) in the abroad, especially in Germany, national artistic environment. and he moves in his house on Mount Vesuvius. His works 1980 are inserted in the art book He is selected for a collective for schools “Storia dell’Arte Italiana” at the Arsenale for the Biennale curated by Argan in Venice. The following year and Lara Vinca Masini. one of his portraits is acquired by the Uffizi Museum in Floirence. 2003-2005 In 1982 he is one more time at the Emblema’s downfall begins. Biennale in Venice, Pavilion Italy Various reasons lead him to sign curated by Luciano Caramel. an exclusive agreement with Telemarket, a TV channel 1985 specialized in selling art works. Emblema’s works are displayed This controversial choice, at the Royal Palace in Naples. which brings him back to success The Royal Academy of the Arts and, despite the numerous criticizes him again. The artist disapprovals, allows him Piero Dorazio on the Corriere to come out froma a relatively dei Libri e dell’Arte (May 29th 1985) isolated period. During these years accuses Emblema of being his works are displayed “a famous artist only in his family”. in Rio De Janeiro and San Paolo From this moment till his death, Del Brasile, in Japan and Mexico City. Emblema will never organize He also holds lectures in these cities. an exhibition with his works in his hometown again. 2006 During this same year he hosts Falling ill in Mexico at the end Philippe de Montebello director of the previous year, Emblema dies in of the Metropolitan Museum Terzigno on February the 2nd.

Conversation Between Salvatore Emblema and Amnon Barzel

When did phenomenon Emblema starts?

Phenomenon? Do you mean when I started to realize that I loved my work? I was a Student, attending the Academy of Fine Art in Naples. I had no interest whatsoever for what was being taught, were past things at all. Nothing interested me there. Then there was the possibility to go to Rome thanks to Carlo Levi and Ugo Moretti, who gave me hand and got me started in Rome, where I can came in contact with other

artists. I arrived in rome in 1949-50: and I started working with leaves, and that’s where the story of the painter Emblema started.

Why did you come to use the dried leaves?

The truth is that I couldn’t afford to buy colors and canvases – like many others painters at that time- So I used to hang around a baker at Via del Babuino in Rome, who would wheat sacks. Instead of painting on them, I stuck leaves onto them, because colors were too expensive, while nature offered me leaves for free.

The struggle to survive lead to invention!

Well, more that trying to survive, It was a fact of Necessity to do things. Necessity, in its deepest meaning, is the only thing I believe in! 1954 was a crucial year for me. It was the time when I started to understand and to be aware of many things and to suffer for them. In the work with the leaves I did not feel the need to cover the canvas with preparatory materials. Instinctively I have always loved the coarse surface of the jute, it was like to say: canvas is a support, but is also already painting and color. In other words it was something entirely natural, entirely real.

The sacks of jute has always represented for you a contact with every-day reality, with pure, non-elitist matter which went beyond the traditional definition of art.

Well, I don’t know. I only knew that the raw, natural material were already painting for me. My main concern were to have a direct relationship with truth, with what I felt was truth. Leaves and Sackcloth were truth to me.

Salvatore, Did you have contact with ?

Yes, I met him at Argan’s once or twice. Argan introduce me to Burry saying that I was working on Transparency.

I am asking that because I was thinking of the sackcloth. Burri was working with sacks since the beginning of the 50s, even his work stemmed from a political reaction. Let’s not forget that the sacks were those that the Americans were sending in Europe with Marshall plane, filled with food. Totally unlike you, from the contents point of view, although the material is the same.

I think Burri wasn’t interested in the sack material intended, as a reality, as a truth. I agree with you in believing his work with sacks was political in nature.

This your attitude is tied with the fact that you were born and brought up in the countryside, in direct contact with nature, with lava rock, with the typical colors and vegetation of the slopes of the Vesivius.

Thanks to the fact that I lived in a place like Terzigno I had the possibility of making full use of terrains, soils, lapillus stones, and other agriculture related material to extract my colors. These lapillus, in example, is a wonderful black stone – a color that maintain the rich hues of many minerals. And this is exactly the kind of stuff with which the frescoes of Pompeii are made. I belong to this frescoes, and to nothing else. Pompeii’s frescoes are made of colors extract from this earth – a beautiful earth that can struggle with eternity. Then the technology and the industry bring up other kind of colors…

But you used the same earth and the same methods to extract you color?

More less, I grinded that earth mixing it with organic transparent glues to ensure that the tones and colors remained as more natural as possible. Exactly the same methods used in the ancient picture. And the amazing thing is that all this colors where made without chemicals and they conserved beauty and brilliance for century and century. Let’s think that Pompeii frescoes lays buried for two thousand years, and did not get destroyed, probably because they were made of the same ground that covered them… And let me tell one other thing: All about this I discovered for the

first time in America! How come out? Well I’m from Pompeii, Terzigno indeed is in the countryside between Pompeii and the top of Vesuvius, But at that time, in the 50s, the frescoes of Pompeii never crossed to my mind. When in New York I went to the Metropolitan Museum to see a show of ancient roman frescoes. I was shocked, enthralled of that picture. And Rothko, when I told him that, says: You come in America to become acquainted with painting, and We to do the same thing usually go to Pompeii. The picture I saw was absolutely stunning.

Yes, When you look at this frescoes, you get a feeling of Transparency, as if the light came from within the painting.

Indeed there is Light! And chemical or industrial colors can’t give you all that light. It is the natural material, the soils, the organic matter that contain that light.

Salvatore, I believe there is an affinity between you and the pompeii’s frescoes, certainly not in terms of style, nor in term of visualization, we are, after all, in another era, with other needs! But there is however an affinity in terms of a similar intelligence with regard to the senses that absorb light. There is a breath that surges for light. Reason does not create - as Lucio Fontana states int his “White Manifesto”- in the creation of shapes his function is subordinate to the subconscious. You touched the same ground, you and the artists of Ancient Pompeii; you touched the light that has been absorbed by the clods of this ground, even though two-thousand years separate you.

Yes, I feel very close to this frescoes. I’ve been alongside the great artist of the American Modernism, but the main teaching they gave me was to understand just how valuable the heritage I had in Pompeii was. Thank to them I became fully aware of my painting and my own origin.

You stayed in New York in the mid-late Fifties and met some of the outstanding artist of the Abstract Expressionism and, above all, Mark Rothko who had a strong influence in your artistic and personal growth.

No doubt. But another crucial meeting was that with Giulio Carlo Argan. We both came from Rome and we met in New York City in 1965. It all started with a painting that was showed in a art gallery in Rome. It was a small portrait made with leaves, and it was bought by an American gentlemen whose name was David Rockfeller. He left his business card saying if the artist ever happened to be in New York He would have been glad to meet him. I sold all the paintings I had, to a bank, at a ridiculous price. I had to collect the money needed to go to New York. I stayed in New York for almost two years from 1956 to 1958 and then I returned one more time in 1965. American Artists fascinated me. I was not interested in trying to show my works in a New York gallery. All I wanted was to absorb, to breath in, to find myself.

Before New York period there was the works with the leaves. What did you do after leaves collages?

After leaves, one or two years later, I started to work with grinded stones, soils and ashes. But using all that stuff I was making a mistake. My mistake was in taking -in exemple- the leaves, and in tearing them into pieces and then placing them onto canvas at service of the image. With these material taken from the surrounding reality , I made an image –my wife portrait, to say one. But I if I had, by chance, taken the leaf as it was and had stuck it onto the canvas, it would be have been a truly more important thing. Then was the same with the stones, with which I made the horizon or a landscape, if you know what I mean… I was doing advanced impressionism, right to the limit, but the material, the reality was still at service of the imagination. Today, in my work the essence of the material is quite more respected, it isn’t at service of nothing. The painting it is at its own service.

And did you still make this figurative painting when you met Giulio Carlo Argan?

Oh No, the image was already gone before I got to know Argan. There was only color that at times allow you to see the canvas. Argan look at this body of works, and told me that canvas was already the color. He was in according to Leonardo Da Vinci when he says that to reach the essence of the things, the superior being, you have to remove, not to add something more. Then I started gradually to remove color from the surface of the canvas, so that only the jute would remain. Argan challenge me again saying: Very good, but behind this canvas there is a space. And that space is dead. It has been dead for century and it always was a problem for all the artist. In Example for Lucio Fontana or Mark Rothko. With his cuts, Lucio Fontana states that he want to paint the canvas no more. An intelligent gesture, but the problem of the space behind the canvas remained unresolved. Rothko, on the other hand, focused on a sort of Metaphysical transparency. He spread the color to the extreme and would allow you to feel the sense of light.

But Argan said that you Rothko used the light horizontally while you use it vertically…

It was not a conscious thing. I knew nothing about the verticality of my work with respect to the horizontally of Rothko’s. It was quite simply a matter of intuition. With Argan’s help ( I have to be honest about this, his help was crucial for me) I only discovered the space behind the canvas, and that space was made of light. In 1969, a week before Christmas, I called Argan and told him: Professor (at that time used to call him Professor and he would call me Mister) I maybe did something new. I think I can see now the space behind the canvas. It was a small painting, more less sixty by sixty centimeters, where I had unthreaded the jute canvas so that it was possible to see the wall behind. We hung it and we could see what was behind. It was the Columbus’ egg: you remove a thread and you see the space behind. And then Argan told me something that will remain with me for all my life: Salvatore, we’ve made it. The wall the reality that is beyond the painting is taking part of the painting itself. We’ve made it. Let’s give ourselves a present: let’s address each other with our names.

Critic Digest

Dear Emblema,

As I did not see you at your exhibithion , I would like to tell you just how much I appreciate the seriousness and quality of your work. I was struck by metaphisical and meditative melancholy of you paintings. You are aware of the crisis, painting is undergoing in today’s artistic culture: rejected as a product of a refined technique and harbinger of a message, painting neverthless survives as a dimension, a place -albeit desertic- of our coscience. It was the tool of the immagination: the magical screen on wich the the image took the form of an object, surrendered to reality, became coscience. Analysing the objective reality of the painting – nothing else but the canvas, the frame, the field of preparation – one realises that you have absorbed and adepte the mutability and the light of the image. Your painting becomes sensitive becaus it does not rescrit itself to receiving, it makes the depiction: it is not only a screen, it is a matrix.It is the hypothesis, or the perspective o fan a imaginary space. Giulio Carlo Argan, 1972.

There is no ambition in Salvatore Emblema of wanting to demystify painting, or to resolve its underlying ambiguity, thanks to which in desiring to create one does the contrary, that is, one imitates. The exact is true, for by carring out a work that is

manifestly manual and non- creative, by outlining and spreading the material, one discovers light, space, time and the true and not figurative force of the symbol… I would like to recall that Salvatore Emblema started his research by working on the material support of the painting, canvas and frame work. The weft generated the colour, and, the colour was initially the frame, then the background and, finally the figure. The figure is, istitutionally, symbolic: Emblema is currently questing a figure that can be the sing of all that can be turned into a figure, that of nature, even if it is landescape. And, finall, his sign aims to be the common sign of all that exists, which accepts nothing besides itself but , symbolically, the complimentary spatiality of the sky. Giulio Carlo Argan, 1979

It is as if the Emblema’s sculptures were sensible to light, as if they were exposed so as to receive and maintain the mark , the sign, the passage of the unsaid. Nature as well is made of signs, of invisible symbols that are not perceived, which, ensnared by painting, somehow have to manifest themselves Giulio Carlo Argan, 1992

Space is an idea of the limit as definition of infinite. Emblema ends up reducing the image into an aggregate, almost exoteric, system of proportions: the plane and the retroplane are connected by the parallel rhitmycal unthreading. Almost as if height, width and depth ratios, were regulated by a golden section. Theare appear in the limited thickness of the frame work several trasparent strata of coloured canvas that create depht, that almost invisibily interlace and juxtapose the ortogonal threads of the canvas, wich is, in the process, dematerialized Palma Bucarelli,1979

The Horror of being finite generates the Tabula Rasa,The frame work, the bare pattern and the basic and essential conversation with one’s scado. The world is what eludes the gaze The world is the screen; it is the distance separating the personal perimeter of survival with the illusory magical box of the artificial space… Entering the shape and the colour of the mineral as well as vegetables world is like piecing together and dismantling with obstinacy hte motivations of one’s life and one’s perceptions: Emblema instinctively fraternises with those motivations, with their precariousness randomness and their black secret. Filiberto Menna,1981