Quite often when a painting must be restored, conservators turn to a special textile that is very light and thin, almost impalpable – silk crepeline. This material can indeed be employed in different fields such as transparent relining, a technique that preserves the beauty of a work of art in an almost invisible way and also helps protecting the legibility of an inscription and the characteristics of materials.
Therefore silk crepeline is usually employed to restore works of art rather than to make new ones, but Italian artist Franca Pisani subverted its main purpose creating a series of 25 works in which sheets of silk crepeline were mounted onto a wooden frame and used as if they were canvases.
Collectively called "Trasparenze" (Transparencies), the paintings are characterised by Pisani's trademark thick, abstract and at times primitive brushes in bold and bright colours. Maybe Pisani chose this material almost to reconnect with the work of her grandmother who designed embroideries for Queen Elena of Italy, but in this case Pisani recreated abstract embroideries with paint.
The works will be part of an exhibition - "Succisa Virescit - La forza della rinascita" ("When cut down, it grows back stronger - The strength of rebirth) - featuring different works by Franca Pisani opening in April at the Montecassino Abbey.
The event will be divided in different parts: the first, entitled "Stone Garden" (from 6th April to 27th October), will feature a series of artifacts from the old Montecassino Abbey, destroyed during a series of military assaults by the Allies against the Germans, that started in January 1944 and went on for five months.
These artifacts - heads of saints and angels, severed hands and arms of statues, columns, Bizantine mosaics - were preserved in the Abbey archive for 75 years, but Pisani was given the chance to rediscover them and use them for a unique installation that will also feature objects found after the bombings, such as military gear and weapons.
The "Transparencies" paintings on display at the Abbey (from 6th April to 19th May) will instead act as if they were magnifying lenses. They will indeed be superimposed on black and white images of the destroyed Abbey after the 1944 bombings.
This is a way for the artist to pay homage to the history of the Abbey, while projecting on the images of the destruction the optimism of art and of the creative power of human beings as a path to rebirth.
These works are extremely fragile with the colourful brushes on the translucent silk crepeline reproducing almost primordial signs and symbols evoking the Lascaux Cave paintings; they represent a way to exorcise the terror of the war with the beauty of fragile textiles and the hope of colours.
A third and final installation - Bright Stone - will consist in an ash tree trunk partially encased in a white marble cylinder from the cave of the Monte Altissimo, home to Michelangelo's favoured marble quarries. This piece symbolises the Creation being embraced by human creativity.
All the installations forming "Succisa Virescit" hint at a new life, from the physical rebirth of Montecassino, rebuilt after the war, to the spiritual rebirth of all human beings as visitors will be invited to look at the past and remember, while nurturing high hopes for a better and brighter future.
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