“Everything here is therefore a shape of my mind, an aspect of my soul, a proof of my fervour.”
How to read the Vittoriale is already written. It is the same d’Annunzio who reveals to us his creative thinking, the intimate spirituality and, at the same time, the strength and dynamism of doing, as keys to the true and profound understanding of the “Santa Fabbrica”. His action is, therefore, a “spiritual revelation”, expressing a multiform energy that generates stylistic features with specific historical contours. These contours are often in an apparent contradiction to the ‘new’ architecture of the Schifamondo’s wing, the nineteenth-century paths and the shadows of the Vallette, and the art ‘installation’ of the Arengo.
Therefore, continuous stimuli are created and experienced in the Vittoriale. The act of capturing and fixing images requires us to hesitate and forces us to suspend one’s thoughts while waiting among the lights and shapes of the Vittoriale. The most secret sensitivity of the man d’Annunzio emerges from that silence claimed by the poet, and found in this research while traveling alone to those places at the moment of their most painful closure.
Thus, was born Animula, a story in images, a notebook of visions, written by following the thoughts of the Poet with discretion, in an intimate and silent dialogue with his own soul: the Genius Loci of the Vittoriale.
The depiction of such a strong and creative spirit does not allow for an approximation: “My dear Gian Carlo […] I know from experience that, when a detail is left out, the detail is lost”. Every detail is therefore an essential part of the creative genesis of the Poet-Builder: preserving the nuances and sharpness of our photographic vision is therefore a revelation, not a virtuosity.
The search for the essential requires that we move as far away as possible from the documentary reproduction of reality. This happens by using black and white that allows the expansion of the expressive capacity of the image.
The Vittoriale today is not a motionless celebration, as the Spirit of the place is continually renewed in the encounter with contemporary art in which the sculptures of my friend Ugo Riva strongly participates. Figures with noble features are born for this place, dressed for this place, and in intimate communion with it. This exhibition is part of a larger photographic story, dedicated to these works, and created from the reflections with Maestro Riva and Giordano Bruno Guerri, both engaged in an artistic collaboration to bring the Vittoriale back to its essence of “living stones”. Trying to grasp the essence of this place was therefore the first step in narrating through photography the sculptures that Riva wanted to exhibit here, in their natural home.
