On May 24 2010 the Consul General of Italy, Ms.
Alessandra Schiavo, officiated the opening of the art
exhibition “the Wall and Further Tales” by Italian artist
Matteo Pugliese. The exhibition was held from May 24 till
June 19 2010 at the Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery.
SPEECH BY THE CONSUL GENERAL OF ITALY,
MS ALESSANDRA SCHIAVO,
FOR THE EXHIBITION OF MATTEO PUGLIESE
(24 MAY 2010)
Dear Maestro Pugliese,
Dear Director of the KWAI FUNG HIN Art Gallery,
Distinguished guests,
I hope that you will forgive me if I am a bit nationalistic and say
that Italy is one of the richest countries of the world in terms of culture,
history and art.
To be born in Italy means to grow up among churches,
monuments, paintings and sculptures. It means to get to understand very
soon what was – in the ancient Greek and Roman times - the classical
ideal of beauty and of harmony. It means to have the chance to admire,
since one is a child, some of the most sublime representations of the
human body and of the human creativity.
Also the works by Matteo Pugliese are the heirs of this millenary
tradition, the result of the interconnection of cultures and civilizations
which shaped the history of my country.
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I am a diplomat, but I come from a family of sculptors and of
painters.
Although I could stare for hours at a beautiful painting, I have
always been fascinated by the mistery and power of sculptures, by the
way they extract life from inert materials, by the magic with which
sculptors give a soul to a block of marble, or emotions to bronze.
When he was working on his “Prigioni” (some of his most
amazing masterpieces), Michelangelo said that each block of marble hid
a certain character; contained already - inside of itself - a very specific
form of life, a particular person, or plant, or animal, which was just
waiting to be liberated by the artist.
According to Michelangelo, the sculptor just had to act “per forza
di levare”, that is to say by “taking away”, “eliminating” any
superfluous material, in order to liberate the sculpture which already
existed inside the marble, and let it become evident for everybody.
I must have been 4 or 5 years old when I was told this anecdote
about Michelangelo. Since then, I grew up with the idea that artists are
able to express – by eliminating everything which is superfluous or not
eternal - the essence of human nature and of human feelings, going
straight to the truth of things and to the meaning of life.
Having grown up in this way, you can imagine how glad I was to
receive, just a few days after my arrival in Hong Kong (I moved here
last month), the invitation to the opening of the exhibition of an Italian
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sculptor, who is exactly my age and who is building up his well
deserved reputation not only in Italy and Europe, but also in Asia.
To be an artist it is not sufficient to give birth to beautiful
creations, since beauty is an essential element of art but is not enough.
To create a piece of art, it is necessary to express something at the
same time unique and universal. It means to have the ability to touch
upon the heart and the imagination of people, and to do so in a
unprecedented way and in a way which is powerful and effective at any
time in history and at any place in space.
In this sense, Matteo Pugliese fully deserves the epithet of “artist”,
since his “extra moenia sculptures” express something which I am sure
any single human being – be it a man or a woman, rich or poor, old or
young – has experienced : the struggle against some interior ghost, the
need to evade from its present constraints, the aspiration of building
something new, of going somewhere else, of breaking a wall.
We all fight against walls. Sometimes they are walls of
indifference, walls of prejudice, walls dictated by social conditions.
Sometimes they are walls of fears, walls determined by our own fears.
The whole history of mankind is a history of struggles against
walls, or against limitations of any kind.
Even science and progress are the product of men breaking the
walls of ignorance, or trying to overcome limits determined by nature.
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Medicine, for instance, is the fruit of men willing to break the walls of
disease, or wishing to keep death at a distance.
There is seldom something more universal than a man trying to
come out from his wall, sometimes at the cost of suffering, humiliation,
and even defeat. Because it is the essence of human nature to fight
against limits.
And it is not important if one wins or loses, as Pugliese himself
explained. Some of the sculptures created by Pugliese couldn’t make it,
although they had powerful bodies, strong backs and stiff muscles.
Because it is also in the essence of human life to be defeated.
But none of Pugliese’s sculptures looks like losers.
To me, they are all winners - even when they hit their head against
the wall; even when they express terrible pain or despair; even when it is
clear that they will not come out of the wall which is emprisoning them.
And in fact they all look like giants and Titans. They all show a
strength, and a power, and a determination which has something
mythical and which reminds us of the classical heroes, like Ulysses, for
example : like Ulysses who tried to overcome the Pillars of Hercules –
that is to say the “walls” and limits imposed by Gods to men, and that
men should have never tried to defy.
And in fact, one of the aspects which distinguish men from other
living beings, according to me, is exactly this capacity - or you may call
it “madness” if you prefer - of fighting against walls and limits, against
conventions, against habits or constraints, against any instinct or rational
thinking.
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I therefore wish to thank Matteo Pugliese for his determination to
express this crucial side of humanity : the attempt to fight against the
past, to change the present, to build a future free of walls.
And many thanks also to the organizers of this exhibition, to the
Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery, for bringing a piece of Italian sculpture to
Hong Kong.
I hope that this will be the basis for more cooperation in the future.
And thanks also to all of you for your attention.