gulino4

Because of my job I lead an inconsistent life whose rhythm, patterns and expectations keep changing and bring me far from the place were I was born. When I go back there it is like jumping through time, re-living the past, recuperating stability. Each time I find unchanged flavors and unchanged people wrapped in the slow cadence of the town. But there is indeed an incontrollable variable, an arrow, a vibrant presence, and a pulsing everchanging heart who is always like himself. It's Franco.

A lifetime has passed and I remember him just like this. I was very young when he moved his studio below my apartment. I was immediately struck by those canvases, those colors, those bodies, generated by a tireless hand, never satisfied with the result, that was making its works more and more classic in their pictoric essence and more modern in their form and creative freedom. Those paintings became part of my thoughts whether I was in class, at home or in the street.

I soon came to realize that a profound fluxus had passed through them, overcoming the obstacles of the hand, of the brain, of the canvas. That some of those paintings would leave a deep mark, like personas. That for that man painting was like breathing: a necessity, a pleasure, a source of energy. I felt this quality in spite of his loath eyes, his bashfulness, his rare words.

I don't know, Franco, how you have overcome your infinite shyness, the result of your indomable sensitivity. I have no idea of how you, the reserved painter met with me, the intrusive theater man. I have no idea of how we became friends. So different and yet so similar.

To others we must look like a strange double-headed being: eight eyes (including spectacles) and two beards, who does weird things at umpredictable times. But how beautiful it is to stay with a friend like you who eats up miles and miles to to see a valley alit by the moon, a fainting castle, or an African sun illuminating the see. With one who knows how to taste wild pears, clover in flower, and wine. One who loves the poor, laughs at the rude and makes fun of the stingy. One who respects the peddler, is mesmerized by the eyes of a girl as well as by the scent of seawead, by the life of Jesus and the flavor of fish. And one who never takes himself too seriously.

When I'm away from this place I don't understand if it is more our love for muses or the time spent with your freedom and your sincerity, that keeps us together.

Who knows. Perhaps in a friendship like ours, art is only a temporary accident, and probably in friendship, like in art there is nothing to understand...

With a hug,

Alfonso Veneroso

Dear Franco,

I received the painting. The packing worked fine and it arrived safely. Thank you. I immediately brought it to the frame shop and ordered a custom made wooden frame which will be 15 cm thick, made of waxed cherry-wood. The final effect is very beautiful because the reddish brown of the cherry-wood well marries the colors of the "mad cow", as you insist to call this painting.

Now it hungs on the wall of my studio, powerful and problematic, and I, as usually happens to me in such circumstances, I'm struggling to make it mine, to penatrate it, to relate it to the enviroment. Until then the painting won't be completely mine.

I constantly look at it. Study it. Challenge it: back and forth in the room, I'm anxious to understand and unveil its secret. Obviously it's a game, a mental exercise. But not an effort. It is a need to put it in context that makes me consult all my mental records looking for a reference. In my wandering between the living room and the studio I get to wander through time and styles in an attempt to reach a reasonable synthesis.

While looking at your painting I find myself thinking of Ensor and Fautrier, Schiele and Rouault, Otto Dix, Munch and Bacon. But it's just a superficial association. In each one of them I find the tragedy of humankind and its nothingness, the tragedy of exhisting without an explanation. And my mental records keep giving negative signs.

However in your "mad cow" I also find the aftermath of the catastrophe, the moment when the immense energy of the universe wins the nothingness to start all over again. And so, what should I do? - I ask myself - If these names do not represent the ancestors of Franco Accursio Gulino, who are then those ancestors? I realize that to ask you this question would be perfectly useless and in the end I will resign to the fact that comparisons, when it comes to creativity, are gratuitous activity that bring no result.

And so let's come to the core of the question: The "mad cow", although it's not yet completely mine, it's a very beautiful painting. But please stop calling this painting the "mad cow", this dumb beast for the daily news: the victim of an insolent virus. Your painting carries an extraordinary energy, wild and rational at once, where my memory of Northern expressionism is overcome by a full and liberating Mediterranean vitality.

As I approach the end of this letter I wonder why I wrote it. Why I used a means that took me more than half hour instead of just calling you and say: Dear Franco, I received the painting, I had it framed, I like it, all the best. Did I see in this letter a way through which posses a difficult work? Have I succeded? Not completely. Something, though, has happened. Something imperceptible. Exactly.

With best regards,

Yours

Calogero Cascio

From the bottom of the century

a man dirty with color in a room full of raw meat

smiles to me

or else, from a window, every night he contemplates the sea.

Speaks of Faith

Speaks a lost language

Laughs between his teeth and I realize he cries

Speaks while he dreams and sighs

Says: "There is no difference and one can slip into all the other beings

even into another person"

Says that he's the earth and the starful sky

Speaks like a child.

From the bottom of the century this man paints

"not knowing where"

paints with the eye and the heart

brushes them onto the canvas

melts them with food and wine

paints every night for the whole night

closes his eyes speaks with angels

smiles, touchs and falls from eight thousands yards

comes back and surprised dances

at dawn abandons the canvas

discovers a new color, flies high over the sea

With the lucidity of a lover

smiles, searches again and looks, touches, passes running on the edge,

acquaints the future

From the bottom of the century the man falls among the ghosts of the sea.

From a past time

from a secret color whispers caresses and still surprised

stays still

and regards a child from afar.

Daniele Salvo