Analysis of a versatile and provocative artist.
By "Vallini Alfonso Morra".
"As a person, the artist may have whims, moods and intentions of its own, but as an artist is in the best sense: a man, collective man, the bearer and representative of the unconscious psychic life of mankind. This is his "officium", whose weight is often so overwhelming that they are inevitably sacrificed personal happiness and all that usually makes the common man's life worth living .... His life is necessarily full of conflict, because the two powers are fighting in him: the common man with its justified claims to happiness, satisfaction and security of life, on the one hand, and creative passion, uncompromising, second, that tramples on the occasion all personal desires. That's why the personal fate of many artists is so unsatisfactory, indeed it is tragic: not the will of a dark fate, but for the inferior or inadequate capacity to adapt their human personality. Rarely it happens that an artist does not have to pay dearly for the divine spark in him. "Carl Gustav Jung.
Artistic expression is always translated into concrete actions, in acts that discover and represent the deepest aspects of human essence. It makes the unconscious conscious elements of personality giving them order and spirituality.
Art is a kind of sensual force that folds in on itself and expressing itself becomes creative harmony. Creates the myth and it is realized on the chaos of the unconscious. In the myth, streamlined ordering through action are revealed arcane aspects of creative passion in which fusion hermaphroditic, fertile, breeder identifies the whole universe. The "it" that is both male and female, light and shadow, positive and negative, sublime and abject. The function of art is to represent this dual and contradictory reality in which we gather consciousness and unconsciousness, of the natural human ingenuity and wisdom. Making art means to incorporate the fluctuating forms and spread awareness by giving them structure and meaning. The creator of this action by the grace and damnation knows that his act knows no second thoughts because it represents the freedom to propose, in a time when the imagination is always on the run, living in the world through the visual dynamics of ' artistic appearance. That is in the artist come together all aspects of human reality.
to this category men belongs to Giuseppe Sebastiano Devoti. Born in Turin in 1941 Graduated in Architecture at the Polytechnic of this city. Holder in the 60's the chair of figurative and decorative at the Art School "Giotto in Turin. He founded the
Puraismo, which aims expressiveness free, fantastic, anarchic freedom from all stylistic rationalism. Currently uses a completely new and unique painting technique, in which mixed materials are used more to reach the evocative impact of the finished product.
The merging of the colors, synthetic enamels, acrylic stucco and shade is obtained on a preparation that could be called encaustic extension, technique already used in ancient Pompeian wall paintings. This procedure sets the colors to the surface by the heat.
Devolder extends this technique by giving an additional function, to obtain a new and disturbing painting. The marbling that the paintings have been obtained by boiling the color temperatures close to 400 degrees Celsius. On the basis
accessible encaustic are added to other materials that create the whole painting. These additions are spread through hand gestures of Action Painting, and also heat-treated and worked with engravers of bamboo. Complete the rather complex technique using a special plaster, invented by the artist, that the composition of materials.
analyzing his work gives the impression of being in front of a diverse and indefinable personality always looking for a clarification of style. This impression (born dall'irrequietudine character) is incorrect, in fact, a careful analysis of its production identifies a common technical and formal coherence to his entire artistic career. The thin this anxiety in his paintings is that he skeptical of life. Devotees shows in his art awareness in our society the artistic utopia is fragmented into individual actions are often inconsistent with each other. Rather, what is absent from our artist is the continuity operational, which hit his paintings for nearly 25 years. This break comes from professional contingencies, but also by a marked intolerance to limit his activities to a single aspect of production. This character has always placed himself in opposition first and then with others. In the quarter of a century in which reduced the activity of painting has shifted his artistic interests on the production of teaching materials for the school of which he was leader: he cast bronze sculptures, pottery fired using primitive methods and ink drawings. This phase was still important because it is made in a particular area of \u200b\u200bresearch. The experimental techniques use, and unscrupulous with new inks and vinyl resins, made him familiar with the subsequent use of the "dripping".
The originality of the gesture of painting lies in the fact that both the artist as an observer may, in a special situation and preferred to follow the act of painting in the manner of those who listen to music. The works are characterized by attention to the gesture produce, beyond the verbalization of emotional reactions, involvement introspective. Focusing on how the artist expresses his inner part, it goes beyond the pure visual sensation related to the subject of the painting.
By this way of relating with the work, Devoti desperately trying to show us what art is not represented. In the words of Hegel to make "this presence" of what is hidden in the unconscious. The artist working through a fictitious inability to identify the real, reconstructs the emotional essence of the world catching up with the thought that painting the immediacy of view can not give.
In 2006 he founded the "Puraismo" He just wanted (at a time when the urgency to return to paint inalienable became an existential need) to put order in his personal history and being able to share with friends what her human experience and Art had developed, called the formal aspects of her art project. The report
-looking framework, seeks to develop a metaphysics of seeing the world before any look, even his own. Devotees proposes an archetype of reality reinvented, the dawn of dream. Dreamlike vision of the cosmogonic myth of the universe before the man swallowed by supplementing their own desires and needs.
His belief emerges from the Manifesto Puraista stating:
.... "The discussion of color is a formal fact characterizing the magical relationship that the artist has with the material of its expressiveness, the design element that identifies a 'mediated through operation a true emotional pathos .... "The work stems from the analysis of appearances, giving up optical interpretation of the world" .... "Let us ec'invadano things enter in .... "We need to propose a purely subjective view, painting a subject that takes shape in an almost spontaneous and primordial, in our hands ... .. "That our painting appears as a jumble of everything that the original will be" ... .. "we must be able to summon the effort to return to the quasi-divine origins of the perception virgin, unfiltered by the eyes that judge, they accept or reject."
In recent works can be regain conscious and consistent application of these ideas and at the same time discover the stylistic continuity that dates back to the '60s.
analysis of items:
1960 - "Mrs. Avalle Maria" - In the portrait of his mother, the artist has all the elements of style and character that put him in a relationship with reality "subjective" hard and immutable. In a landscape of contrasts raises the austere figure of the mother, a disquieting foreignness, this simulacrum of authority possessive and detached. The livid sky emphasizes this aspect of alienation mixed with respect and highlights the confidence that, starting with the most intimate, extends to all that surrounds him. In a strange environment and grow cold and hurl themselves upwards skeletal trees that represent the need to rise from the present need is to get lost in a dark and castrating. The space in which to do is move the ground where the twilight is eternally on the run. In the face of classical composure and the absence of emotion emphasizes the lack of communication, in close relationship with each other.
These elements are still under the 1961 - "Solitude" -. The place where the painter moves. It 's still an alien environment, a wasteland in which there are the skeletons of the works of men. The need to break away from the reality represented by trees, in this case, it is castrated dall'incupirsi the upper reaches of the sky. It remains, therefore, no other place where the earth organized into a lattice of vanishing. These are an attempt to mythologize shapeless and messy reality. The normal daily life, which should form the stable frame of our existence, frustrated by the human presence is self-defeating and destructive. The world as it appears in the eyes of the artist, it is therefore later than the immutable order of actions taken in mythical time, "I am human actions that have brought chaos to create the conditions in which the individual living alone.
1961 - solitude, Oil on wood 21.5 x 36.5
At present the lack of confidence, partly because of experience, has changed its softening point. Space precosmico proposed place outside of time and the mundane daily emotions, when it is not man- and colonization. The observer, now agent of the act to recognize and reconstruct the hidden essence of what falls under his eyes, remains devoted to these environments dreamed. The world offered by Devoti you look like you look at the surface of an unknown planet: the eerie beauty of what has never been seen before. He has an art in which are projected onto the surface of the painting the moments of the process of visual identification of the work, trying to recreate the places where there is no room for familiarity, for effusions, in which we should not feel at home, places where the emergence of a feeling of estrangement from the cultural continuity. As he says: "Those of existence every time reinvented itself as a utopia of the genesis ... .. new aboriginal mythology, in which reproduce the metaphysical state of the feelings of the Age of Dreams. "
2006 - The Petrified Forest - encaustic on panel 50 x60
In - Petrified Forest - 2006, the spontaneity of the stylized, by the dark contrast of color, show the world a utopia to energizing, is the dynamic ideal of painting to express this hope. He aims, in the nature of the framework, represent what the eye evokes. Promises not only the subject appears to the public, but also his ability to appreciate art as proposing subjectivity.
watchers, giving recognition to familiarizing, analyzes spaces to identify them as unknowable news whenever they occur in the eye. In this context
reappear known facts: the upward movement of the trees' skeletons alienated "depicting the need to relate with the absolute. As a new horizontal tension seems to relate the individual consciousness with the surroundings. The horizontal marks represent the will to order the intermediate space between the conscious and unconscious, context in which the "superego" censorship. The link between the parts of the composition is obtained by a reminder of the clear sky on marbling perspective plane.
As can be seen in the context of '78 - Tower of fishing - the graphic elements peculiar to the painter, presented here as ideograms oriental dishes. The intersection of the elements is a visual device to give the whole abstraction. Devotees research on the composition of harness, giving it relevance, the subject and make the report on the ideal plane of psychic levels with reality. In this work the color palette fades away towards the red underlining, through the night sky, that life is always a race to the light fleeing disappearing over the horizon.
1978 - Tower of fishing - mixed media 57.5 x 77.5
This way of creating formal coherence is taken up and developed since 2005 with the picture-Tepee -. Abandoned the technique of the stroke a "dripping" through space produces dense color graphic materials. This painting belongs to a series which will be specified in sull'epopea Indian technique of encaustic.
2005 - Tepee - acrylic and enamel on paper 40.5 x 34, 
2006 - Winter Transfers - encaustic and plaster on wood 40 x 30 The following year - Lebanon 2006 - is the dripping enriched graffiture and recordings, obtained by working with the color of bamboo spatula, technical element that enhances and defines the artistic gesture, softens the pictorial cohesion of the painting. The object placed in the background, but separated from it, is the self-estrangement that the human presence (in actions, aspirations and ideals) has environment.
2006 - Lebanon 2006 - acrylic and enamel on paper 40.5 x 34.5 The dichotomy between the bottom and the elements of composition will be from this moment, one of the salient features of his expression. In
- Wide contrast - (2007) The representation of the reasons blacks, similar to a single ideogram, seem to float on the bottom making them aware of the gap between compositional elements of the painting.
the careful arrangement of signs binds together with a voltage from disturbing symbol of the work force. The thin lines enveloping, as the spider, implement a force suspended on the surface of the painting, create two-dimensional annihilating the volume.
2007 - Wide contrast - encaustic on panel 40 x 60 Under the 2007 - Fata Morgana - blacks floating elements on the landscape that emerges from the roots of the tree statues, are in metal cages alien, the architects of a subtle anxiety. These structures, fairy castles, unfriendly and at the same time engaging, creating a desire to investigate this environment fascinates foreign only in the conscious and rational but deeply rooted in our unconscious. The signs make
skew the horizontal plane even more alien to the natural stereotypes.
2007 - Fata Morgana - Encaustic on wood 64.5 x 94.5 of 2007 - In front of the Leviathan -. The title of the picture, recalls the genesis of political power and opposed to Hobbes' state of nature: uncomfortably miserable, lonely, because it is dominated by short and brutal war of all against all. "
In this work, the sky is almost explosive new dynamism, while the compositional elements in the artist's practice, specifying taking evidence. The grid of the ideal "tree skeletons" become increasingly disconnected from the environment. There are two ectoplasmic figures, archetypes of humanity to be specified in principle, but clearly placed in context. A ghost of a perspective grid, embryo of the order, find the evolutionary direction of human society and complete the horizontal plane. The flash of light in the sky is mirrored in the white elements of strengthening the base of the prospective settlement.
2007 - In front of the Leviathan - encaustic on board 58 x 100 In the work
- Restlessness - 2007 the grid elements of blacks took place against a background of clear, highlighting the intricate weaving of signs makes the chiaroscuro of the environment, per se ambiguous, ever more foreign. Horizon traces of human presence are clear and disturbing corroded its ability to internalize the essential structures of the real world, first to represent.
This art is identified as a gateway autonomy but conceived the idea of \u200b\u200bthe subjective things. Idea that only the artist can capture and represent the strength of his imagination. The signs of his paintings, expressed with gestures graphemes spontaneous, shows the registration of an instinctive state of mind in which the elements expressing the force applied by the gesture.
2007 - Restlessness - encaustic on panel 48 x 32 In - Metropolis - (2007) maintains the urban environment that has become the contrast ratio between the backing and the black skeleton of the buildings. While the upper part of the picture is static in the regularity of the graffiti on the underside is done in an intense dynamism, through the traces of a possible presence of vehicles. The ceiling of the city is unlikely to be identified escape routes, which are part of structures, bridges and generous support of formal consistency.
2007 - Metropolis - encaustic on panel 60 x40
production Devoti, even when it imitates nature, realize the Platonic notion that the painting produces copies of copies, as the artistic representation of visible reality expressing the view the idea of \u200b\u200ban idea. In our case it portrayed things, ideas of reality dream of becoming a perfect copies thereof, produced in a unique and original. In
artistic career Devotees often found in boats and horses represent freedom primitive existence. Even the centaur, the place to be hybrid between emancipation of thought and self-destructive slavery of bestiality, is peculiar shape of his concept of freedom.
made clear:
"If you look at the man in his" naked natural "that, despite the humanization he continues to be a mammal for which the social constraints imposed: the territory, the search for food and reproduction can not be designed and interpreted only in zoological terms.
This attitude, full of bestiality and self-evident, it seems justified by the distance, now existing between man and environment in which they live. Having said that we can say that he was born feral hunter at the time of the steppes, it was gradually adapted to locomotion in a sitting of oil burned.
This reveals that all of the rise of civilization has been built with the same physical and intellectual man who was paid to the mammoth. Our e-culture, which has just fifty years, is based on a psychosomatic unit that dates back a hundred thousand years ago. If there is no reason to have confidence in the possibilities of adaptation, however, the distortion and there is a clear contradiction between a civilization from the almost unlimited powers and a civilizing whose aggression has remained unchanged since the time when it meant killing the reindeer survive. "
His art is interpreted between instinct and rationality, where the imagination is always restrained by the complaint that the "superego" work on his ball drive, but the reality has always dreamed over.
In the period between '70 and '95, in which painting has become sporadic, he produced many works of graphic art. The designs of this period are obtained by washing a blood clot, partially dry, china and vinyl resin. The Litho is suggestive.
1972 - Marina - China vinyl resin and mixed media pen & gouache
The vertical lines in the rigging - Marina - '72 have already mentioned, according to emphasize that human freedom is expressed in the vertical tension of some elements of the work. In the next
- Horse - the movement of the '77 set is obtained by the rotation of the head of the signs and corroded obtained using the technique above gives coherence and evocative composition.
1977 - Horse - China vinyl resin and mixed media pen & gouache
Other interesting works are the "Crazy Horse", where it takes sign in spontaneous and dynamic concept of freedom of the idea. The activism of the horse, contained in an abstract space and dish, the eroded shapes are mixed, are the very essence of thought. This is formed and continually modifies its definition to find a rational and perfect. And it is this form which segregates in an unreal and one-dimensional hyperspace. Devoti is her concept in poetic form in the verses: For fields of the moon / My Thoughts, / crazy horse galloping in the wind. / While I'm going to be like the river / wave shape in the river / And the river wave. 
2005 - Horses Crazy I - Mixed media 62x42
In - Crazy Horse II - 2006, the formal and ideological setting remains unchanged, while the next - Crazy Horse III - are reconfirmed in dark colors and contrasting the grounds that will produce the ideal of its current way to propose.
2006 Crazy Horse II - Mixed media on wood 78x60
2006 - Crazy Horse III - Mixed media on wood 90x62
The coherence of his art is expressed in the technical ability to offer products aesthetically pleasing because it supported the spontaneity of the gesture. This takes place in space where irrational subconscious, the archetypes content must always be reinterpreted. The use of fillers treated at high temperatures, exacerbated by a crackle, give body to the horse figures. In
- Chiron - and - the fall of Pegasus - 2007 has been one of the many moments of personal research if it is confirmed that the constitutional restlessness forced to deny membership to an idea and its maintenance.
2007 - Chiron-mixed up silver and gold foil 6.5 x8, 5
2007 - Fall of Pegasus - mixed media on cardboard 30x34
From 2005 it is clear how to achieve the power to recognize and interpret its legacy as a perceptual reality of his experience and analysis of some of his works it is clear that what he meant to convey a feeling of self, so intense and penetrating, to be expressed mainly through the passive signs traced on the surface of the painting.
2006 - Fear generates Taboo - enamels and stucco on Paper 22.5 x30, 5
often hear artists include the reasons that support their production and that is why I spoke with Devotees of issues related to art, in this regard he says:
"The transformations of contemporary society revealing more and more the character of a show to bring the aesthetic relationship to the whole existence. Generalizing the categories of membership becomes a simulacrum of reality itself, which puts us in a critical situation in the idea of \u200b\u200ba consolidated work of art "... ... .. "The psychological experience of the perception of forms is structured on universal laws where the circle tends to always express the same feeling, no matter what has circular shape. And the same applies to the colors, for the articulation of form and shape, color and color, and form and color. In essence, the act of perception, relying on experience already acquired, tends to interpret things regardless of what they represent "... .. "In art, the abstract form was created by the stress to which the artist is subject to interpretation and can give its specific sensitivity to form. The creative act, within the work, becomes an existential track of all the interaction between reality, stress, sensitivity and creativity, that may be common to all, but that only the artist can express and objectify "... .. "The taste, although subjective, has its universal basis. The criteria under which it believes are not related to the subject-ness of thumb, but the universal nature of man, then connected to the feeling, imagination, intellect characteristics that are more intuitive than the human genius. The concepts of imagination, feeling, intuition and genius are thus the only evaluation criteria of artistic ... "There are no limits to freedom inventive artist, in fact, while science is based on reason, history on that docu-ments, the introspective poetic art is the work of the imagination, which is the power of combining and dividing of things beyond reason, having said that, there remains the critical assessment to determine the validity of the work ... " The function of art is to highlight the dynamics of the members-ties which configures it as a form of consciousness-tion policy. It 's time fruitive artistic experience, which is central theme in the immediate context as well, to represent the value of a work of art. " This is a summary
his thoughts on the craft of art, as an artist he sees himself as belonging gender "Homo faber" because that species is to worship the sanctity of the gesture.
