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Composizione (Composition) - Soft-wax etching - mm. 290x290 - 1982 - 20 + vi |
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The following piece of writing by Franco Fanelli has been choosen to present the engravings: "Il foglio e la pagina: strategia e poesia di Elisabetta Viarengo Miniottii When she first got acquainted with intaglio printing in the late 70’s, Elisabetta
Viarengo Miniotti made an engraving
which has now been retrieved
as a suitable introduction to this exhibition. It is a
mezzotint figure, and
what had impressed me about that sheet printed in the former
Arcipelago Gallery in Via Bonafous, Turin, was the strict observance
of the technique where the use of black was not an affectation but that colour was taken in its
absolute value, so that I thought that the
painter had given more value to the mysterious subliminal
texture of the uncut
background rather than to the figure cut in that black. After
some years I realize that all the subsequent progress
of Mrs.
Miniotti’s art was actually included in that texture. If a visitor
needs a direct confirmation of my view, he should look at the
engraving made some time later , showing
a main door in Piazza Vittorio and he would notice a
significant stronger return of the mezzotint technique: the berceau
on the right, instead
of jutting out as an architectural feature, has been given a
clutch-stroke of deep black. Its velvety softness mesmerized
the engraver who did not dare to violate the purity of that darkness
made up of endless warps and wefts woven by the cogged iron. Yet, this is just a
clue, so we have
to rely on evidence and explain
what this is based on. As a matter of fact,
this exhibition is an anthology and enables visitors to go
through all the main stages of the author’s progress which
had a decisive turning point in the early Nineties after a long and
patient investigation into the teachings of the Turinese school, notoriously well versed in the use of plates, needles
and burins. Right from
the start, however, Mrs Miniotti decidedly turns to
Calandri and his group in
this city which for a
memorable and unique period saw the so-called “two souls”
of modern Italian
engraving, i.e. “material” Bartolini and “sign-oriented”
Morandi coexist in the activity of Calandri himself and
of Francesco Franco. Writing about these two Turinese artists,,
many critics have pointed out, over and over again, that the terms
of this assumed bipolarity are not correct and even narrow. This is
indirectly proven by the works of some later engravers including
Mrs. Miniotti, as we will see further on. First of
all, I think that she is much more interested in the
technique of engraving on plate used by Calandri and Soffiantino
than in their style. Mrs. Miniotti’s technique is made up of
continuous stressing of the deep core of the matrix, of sudden
strategic changes, of
head-on attacks and sudden retreats, of rents made by the strength
of the mordant, then feverishly stitched
by means of scraper and burnisher, of jagged signs of etching
and pleasant strokes of aquatint, burning bites on open plate
relieved by the ointment of soft-ground etching. I do believe that
this way of doing she subsequently grafted on
Franco’s rational composition, this turmoil of actions and
procedures suggest that Mrs. Miniotti’s
has tried to master a technical range as wide
as possible. To achieve this
object, she has probed into the endless combinations and
equations you can cut on that millimeter-thick plate. In the
meantime,, while she is finding
an extensive range of subjects,
Mrs. Miniotti studies composition and trains her wrist by
taking quick notes “en plein air”, which is a good physical and
mental exercise to get over
the last inhibitions about the virgin coldness of the metal. At this stage- and this is also very important- she begins to work by cycles and series, starting from humble modular shapes which challenge her capacity of achieving effective rhythms of composition, such as the repeated shape of a tin can or the changing graphics in the folds of a tablecloth. At the same time, as a recurrent interlude in the arrangement of the exhibition, some small matrixes act as “test-tubes” for further alchemies. The latest series show that the technical and compositive store put aside in this long stage of research has not become clumsy ballast, but is a powerful propellant for a vertical take-off. The skin of birches, which are some of the most tenderly “cutaneous” trees, becomes a leit motiv for splendid engravings like music scores crossed by knots-notes. They are not just “sheets” but “pages” craving for an abstraction which is at the same time tumultuous (in the materiality of the sign) yet harmonious. Over and over again, one can notice barks like landscapes,, scars like horizons, veins like vectorial lines and inextricable cages. The water cycle, also pictorially explored, opens a further path towards metamorphosis, with a stronger visionary accent, the same, it should be remembered, that characterized Mrs. Miniotti’s early mezzotint works. Now a lighter touch can be noticed, and the sticky transparencies derive from new, tangled, more detailed and more breezy patterns of interlacement. The waters look like nests full of panic, metamorphic beings of the same substance as the gurgling eddies. In these two series the artist puts to good use her early vocation for a total commitment to the language of engraving complicated by technical problems but never onomatopeically hybridized. To end this review, I do not really feel like calling Mrs. Miniotti just a pure scientist of the sign, the gesture and the engraving materials. What I mean will be fully understood by visitors who can read the music written in the score-like tree barks, who can reconstruct a new shape from the Ophelias and the tritonic spirits turned into waves and streams, and thus dig, as deep as the artist does, into these pages, as pregnant as an old manuscript, to look for new alphabets." Franco Fanelli |
