A spectacular insight into Giovanni Comisso's atelier, which illustrates his passion for travel, for drawing, for sketching, for figurative reporting
"In 1929, after winning the Prize Bagutta with People of the Sea , the "Gazzetta del Popolo" proposed a trip to Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. " The drawings that we find here refer to that journey, they are pencil sketches of the Arab cemetery of Fez, of the walls of Rabat, of the castle with the stork in the evening, of the lighthouse of Rabat, two other drawings seem instead reworked sketches, just the his pastel and watercolor. They are almost dreamlike figures, Arabian suggestions in metaphysical landscapes, where ancestral figures, religious symbols, towers, horses, castles etc. stand out. & Nbsp; On December 26, 1929 he sees Suez, a rainbow of pastel colors where the flight of a seagull stands out; but Suez is also a large human figure rising from the sand and towering above a barely sketched hominid. The oldest of the drawings bears the date 1910. Giovanni was just 15 years old and portrays what at first appears to be the belly of a twin-prop airplane, under crushed he draws in pencil in great detail the large airplane above his head. A curious perspective.
But Giovanni Comisso was a writer with always original, unsettling perspectives, animated by a fervent and tireless curiosity. Tireless traveler who loved the taste of exotic discovery also revealed in the semi-unknown corners of his territory: a small photo reveals his passions and condenses some seasons of his life. In kimono on the Piave, leaning against a sunny wall, next to a slightly peeling window and a creeper, he frowns at the sun: "Del Piave liked the white gravels and wild flowers which later became a motif of his paintings. He always looked for lotus flowers that reminded him of the adventures of Ulysses and landed in distant lands. But he never found them. " For a long time, his mysterious East was the Piave, a land to be explored alone but also in the company of Gigetto il citaredo, Raffaello Levi and many young naked boys with whom he loved to play "drug dealers".
Comisso he was also a man of great and lasting friendships, he cultivated the Leopardian value of the "social chain" by living with and for others. The album of drawings and caricatures of characters such as Cristofoletti, Ugo Ojetti, Novello, Vellani Marchi, Cesare Monti etc. is a beautiful testimony to this. many on headed paper from the Bagutta restaurant in Milan, the favorite haunt of writers, painters and artists of that generation. They are simple sketches just sketched, more complete portraits and caricatures but also drawings of various kinds: we passed the time, we talked about literature and politics, and the hand ran over the paper, giving free rein to thought in the form of images. Soldati splendidly portrays the "miracle" of his presence: "the exaltation that irresistibly infected him every time we, his friends, were with him. The immediate joy that his presence, his company gave us. if, around, the colors of the earth changed, they sparkled more alive. As if the adventure was there again, always there, around the corner winking. As if the magical adolescence that continued to inspire him, now, while he was there , even resurrect in us (...)
All this was Comisso for his friends, a true Epiphany of joy and gladness, which lives on here among the papers of this small fund.
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