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| The poetry of Ernani Costantini – A
message of love * |
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by Enzo Di Martino |
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Thirty years of artistic research have provide the opportunity for
an evaluation which may even be definitive for an artist.
Therefore this exhibition held at the San Vidal Art Centre – which
in fact documents thirty-two years’ work – could appear
an irreversibly conclusive statement in the life of a painter.
If it wasn’t for the fact that it is precisely in this exhibition
that Ernani Costantini breaks with this blinkered view as he has
always done anyway, over the course of his now lengthy artistic career – presenting
at its conclusion a collection of works dedicated to the Song
of Songs (from which the series of three
splendid lythographs with a forward by Nantas Salvalaggio is also taken)
which indicate the new opening through which Costantini manages to
flee from any definitive conclusions once more.
In this sense Costantini appears to be one of the most unusual among
the painters from the Venetian area because, over the course of the
years, he has always had the restlessness and the energy to force the
multiple experiences encountered in order to exceed the limits and
charter new pathways to be followed.
It is a game of taking in and then moving on which Costantini began
when he was very young with his esteemed masters – Ercole
Sibellato and Mario Disertori – and which he has continued
when encountering both the “Mediterranean classicism of the
twentieth century” and
the “bright and rather superficial colours” of the “petits
maîtres” of Venice.
The truth is that Costantini has has put down roots in much deeper
ground and “adores” the Tuscan Renaissance, and was profoundly
struck, in 1941, by the fascinating charm of the gentle colour tones
used by Giambattista Tiepolo.
It is important to bear this point in mind in order to understand
how although his intellectual curiosity has often driven him towards
past experiences already consolidated, it has also distanced Costantini
from other, equally important movements underway at the time such
as neocubism in postwar Venice.
In fact, up until the mid-fifties Costantini proceeded with passionate
and free steps at a pace, almost afraid of being definitively pinned
down to one artistic strategy. It is true that he painted The Newspaper
Seller (1953-54) in which the cubist/futurist influence is apparent
but already the following year, in the Annunciation he attempted
a personal combination of the “airy lightness” of venetian
painting and the dramatic “cubist strokes” of the painting
style fashionable at the time.
“All this – writes Rizzi in his splendid and exhaustive
presentation – may give the impression of an artist who has not
yet made his own precise choice”. The truth is, as Costantini
himself explains immediately after that “in culture, as in life,
nothing is acquired, but rather everything is in continuous flux”.
It is a question of a moral stance, before even an artistic one, which
Costantini has cultivated not only in the search for his own personal
artistic connotation but also and above all, perhaps in the search
for his identity as a man.
If by chance it should be necessary to identify a re-current theme
in the life and work of Costantini, this appears to be the sense of
Christianity (rather than of religiousness) which permeates both his
entire works and his personality.
It is then from this deeply felt source that his sacred still life
works spring forth, the soft gentleness of his mother and child images,
and his peaceful and contemplative vision of things and of men.
It is naturally from this strong and undeniable emotion that the great
frescoes of sacred inspiration were created, made especially for churches
which are places of worship.
This Christian inspiration leads him to idealise and adorn with modesty
and naturalness even his more recent nudes, in an attempt, not only
of artistic creation, but to transmit to others a unique and universal
message of love.
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Enzo Di Martino |
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*^ Il
Gazzettino,
Venice, 26 September 1980 |
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