You know, the library describes the personality of its owner, but when he is also an artist then its value doubles. Because that library amplifies and testifies to the network of contacts, connections, passions, deviations and incursions that the artist has been able to create over the years: the library of the artist Fabrizio Clerici is all this, and much more. If you scroll through the titles and the authors, Clerici's friends return, from Bassani to Bigiaretti, from Carlesi to Consolo, from Libero De Libero to Natalia Ginzburg, from Green to Levi, from Macchia to Martini, from Mondadori to Montanelli, from Morante to Palazzeschi, from Piovene to Pound, from Savinio (his Master) to Siciliano, from Soldati to Tamburi, from Tobino to Zavattini to finish with Zolla. A universe of personalities of his world and of parallel worlds, all united by mutual and profound esteem, if not true friendship. And the dedications testify to it, to perfection. Some are real declarations of "love" towards Clerici, towards the debt accrued towards him as an artist, but also as a man. Because Clerici was, in addition to being an excellent painter and draftsman, also an extraordinary cultural personality able to catalyze around himself, and his projects, the best energies of his generation ... and of past and future generations. & Nbsp; The library surrounds and bears witness to the tastes of its creator, identifies passions, indispensable and perhaps occasional readings; but nothing appears to be taken for granted, everything seems to contribute like many pieces of an ideal mosaic to outline Clerici's mental labyrinth, his emotional and rational paths that from these readings, and from the knowledge of the different authors, produce lymph for his paintings. That his value as an artist is recognized by his painter friends may seem obvious, and in this sense one can read the beautiful dedications-drawings by Renato Guttuso, one of his closest friends; but that the writers themselves admit his art, exhorting him to even write, this sounds curious. Ennio Flaiano in a letter dated January 1960 concludes: "P.S. If you know how to draw, you know how to write." And this is an exhortation that returns, an evident sign that the same writers who were friends recognized in Clerici an undoubted capacity for storytelling, which could easily translate into writing. An exchange between intellectuals that knows no boundaries, even if even refined and demanding philologists such as Cesare Segre in a letter dated 24 October 1974 try their hand at commenting on his illustrations of the Furioso, declaring however how "... the notes are content; I dare not break down as an art critic. "
The library constantly dialogues with the various archives, which are always presented here in the respective lots to follow, in a dialogue that knows no boundaries: each of these volumes opens up a dense branching of suggestions, contacts, relationships, ideas, projects developed or to be developed. It is no coincidence that Clerici uses the blank pages, the margins, the folds of the volumes to draw figures, subjects, details, which perhaps the same readings are suggesting. It is not horror vacui, that feeling that a baroque man as well as he could understand, but rather the urgent need to give shape to the images that appear in his mind and if the only support available is the book you are reading, then that becomes the ideal canvas to fix these images. An archeology of thought that becomes drawing, sketch and sketch, the inspiration caught at its birth that germinates in the mind and hand of Clerici and takes shape in the whites of the printed page. The books, these books, are all this: readings, constant memories of friends, inspiration and paper on which to draw, a true laboratory of the artist Clerici, like his atelier. & Nbsp; & nbsp;