ESSAYS BY TURCATO

It was perhaps around 1949, or sometime thereafter. In any case, it is not an event that can be scheduled for a specific time and date. These kinds of things are always happening in Via Margutta.

I was hosting two chaps in my studio. One had recently published, with a certain amount of success, a story in a major daily newspaper. And I can't recall who the other one was. There isn’t much space in my studio; but more than space, the real problem was the lack of beds. The three of us slept stacked up on a sort of mezzanine. This, incidentally, happened frequently, but it is not the point.

We didn’t have much to say to each other and in fact, not much was said. The story of the author seemed to foreshadow good things, and I’m not sure what the other one was meant to make of his life, but it just so happened that he didn’t have anywhere to sleep and would come to sleep at mine. Over time, the two formed an alliance based solely on the roof under which they took cover, but which singled me out as the victim. One evening, I came home fairly late and truth be told I didn’t feel too well.

I did not sleep well that night, and furthermore the smell of drains I generally breathed seemed heavier than usual. Both snored in a tight and destitute embrace as though sleeping the eternal sleep. In the morning I felt worse in the morning, so I asked for one of the two to get me something to alleviate my ailment and provide sustenance. They exchanged short glances. I pulled out the last and only 1000 Lire and handed it to one of them.

Another glance between the two, which struck to me perhaps the most absurd. But then that evening, upon their return, the two handed me a parcel that revealed, as soon as I had unwrapped it, three biscuits.

I raised my eyes amazed and immediately the one, who understood my look in his own way, slipped 100 Lire into my hand. After which there was a silence full of an incredible absenteeism from both who went to unroll a blanket on the floor to go to sleep.

I was ill and perhaps the fever dimmed my brain, I also needed perhaps, who knows, an aspirin, and something else to eat! Both took advantage of my stunned silence and in a second were flat on their backs, hugging each other and snoring. I stayed that way, like a fool and the high fever saved me from any other consideration or need.

They did nothing in fact. When we woke up in the morning (they had to) because I had to go to work, they both departed, and while they were getting ready, they had an unbelievable attitude about them. I felt myself to be a despicable layabout in comparison to them, who exuded accuracy and appeared to be people who, once out of my workshop, would achieve incredible things.

Then when I was ready I would ask “Shall we go?” And they would slip through the door ahead me with an air of confidence.

We would walk through the little Kasbah of Via Margutta n. 48 in silence, up to the front gate, and then would look at each other. I would say ‘Well, I’m going this way’. And they: ‘We’re going that way’. The three of us would drift towards two different points, them full of dignity and I like one who goes to work with no great desire to on an early winter morning.

But the truth was that those two would go right if I went left, and vice-versa if I went right, because the important thing was to while away those twelve hours that would lead to their nocturnal rest in my studio. We never said these things to each other, but we were all aware of them and as a result, we despised each other like poor devils in a fraternal sense.

in Leonardo Sinisgalli ed., Pittori che scrivono. Antologia di scritti e disegni (Edizioni della Meridiana: Milan) 1954, pp. 217 – 219

Although it’s not easy, I would like to invent something,
even if the means themselves of painting are limited.
Maybe music has better ones. In painting you are dealing
with the hard inflexible surface of the canvas, from which it is hard to exit.
I experiment in order to try to stretch the limits of possible expression a little further,
in order to dilate language. You have to create an intensely psychological form,
also working on instruments. (...) The absolute, if anywhere, is in the image.
Painting is the vehicle.
That is why I don’t like geometric abstraction,
because you are always working on a hard, physical surface, that has a history.

Giulio Turcato, 1982