In yesterday's post we mentioned Dino Buzzati, an Italian artist, journalist, writer and costume designer who had a vivid imagination and a passion for fantastic creatures and grotesque moods as well. Actually the grotesque mood fits rather well this last week of October that will culminate in a rather tamed Halloween weekend because of the various lockdowns and curfews in countries all over the world due to Coronavirus.
It is actually worth rediscovering the essence and meaning of this word: the adjective "grotesque" indicates mysterious atmospheres and fantastic and hideous creatures. Such grotesque forms and creatures have actually been popular also as patterns in fabrics for interior design.
The word grotesque comes from the word "grottesca", from the Italian "grotta" or "cave". The origin of this term comes from a fortunate accident: at the end of the 1400s a young man fell in a cave located on the Esquiline Hill in Rome and discovered decorative Roman art with figures of monsters, chimeras and sphinxes. These spaces weren't actually caves, but basements of ancient Roman ruins that fascinated many artists in the centuries that followed.
Adopted and refashioned by Renaissance artists, including Pinturicchio and Raffaello, the fancy creatures that inspired the "grottesche" were combined with elements borrowed from the animal and natural world such as garlands and bright colours and they were reinvented and relaunched.
These patterns and images represented a distortion of reality in a theatrical key and they were characterised by a strong visual impact and by a sort of breach of linearity and decorum.
The "grottesche" remained popular till the 19th century not only as decorative elements for walls, but for textiles as well. The "grotesque" is indeed a textual phenomenon because it gave life to a popular literary tradition, but it is also a textile phenomenon.
Tessitura Bevilacqua for example still produces soprarizzo velvets, damask and brocatelle with a grottesche pattern that combines motifs from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, such as sphinxes and winged women, with some Baroque elements like curvilinear lines and with a few architectural and naturalistic elements borrowed from Rococo. Maybe grotesque patterns could be an idea not just for some kind of Halloween related motifs or even costumes, but for patterns with fantastic creatures and monsters in a modern key.
Textile artists who like the more classical version of the "grottesche" should instead bear in mind that these are incredibly intricate patterns: four years ago Tessitura Bevilacqua recreated a grottesca for fabrics to upholster the chairs at the Kremlin palace in Moscow and, to make this extremely complex pattern, the historical textile company to set up a loom with a record number of threads - 16,000.
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