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FRANCO
BATACCHI
from
Cavazzon
at the Mill in the Dolomitic Rock: modern times respect the
crib
Since
I hate writing for the sake of writing and since I only write
about artists who really interest me, my task was actually quite
easy. As I was getting ready to write a “presentation” the one
and only obstacle was that of overcoming the incipit, how to
begin. From the hundreds of different perspectives, where was I
going to start to make things readable and useful for the reader?
The pleasure of getting involved in the works by Giovanni Cavazzon
was overshadowed by this dilemma. The blank page on the computer
awaited my impressions on a wonderful countryside, the well-known
and familiar one of the hills surrounding the Mill in the Dolomite
Rock (Molinetto della Croda).
Cavazzon lives in Udine,
but was actually born in Lombardy: he then lived for a long
time in the noble city ofParma. And his background is not made up
of the vices and habits of Friulan and Veneto painters.
I was afraid that my friend’s talent as a sketcher would have
induced him to a highly descriptive analysis of landscapes. I
discovered instead that – given the cycle of themes unusual for
him – he was able to keep the story within that vital limit of
evocation which represents the necessary threshold of poetic
communication, and which one should not go beyond.
He placed
great importance on expository locations – that miraculous
apparition that seems to materialize from an eclogue by Andrea
Zanzotto – where he exhibited “countrysides” which are not
mere copies of real places: Cavazzon has recreated a new microcosm
lacking any truth since all which is superfluous has been
eliminated evoking the perfect reality in his and our imagination
and thus establishing a line of communication.
Similar to the
mill, Cavazzon has observed every little thing and everything he
has seen and perceived has been finely ground. It would be very
unlikely to have the chance to have a brief but so rich, precise
and significant experience like this one. In the corner of the
Nativity which is mirrored in the crystal pond at the foot of the
waterfall, the modern world has quietly stepped in with all the
due respect to the testimonies of the real story, which is not the
bookish chronicles of dates and battles, but of the hard everyday
heroisms of human toil.
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