A constant dialectics among changing elements which manifest out of a still nebulous magma, run through by subterranean shivers, by embryonic germinations and precise and squared shapes (or at least that appear to be such): ovoids, rectangles, trapezoids, created through a peculiar technique that the artist has invented and made his own for some years now. A technique which consists in the use of soft "papiers froissés" crumpled and put in relief on the underlying cloth, creating a sort of matter's neologism, which - in turns - is embanked and split from the surrounding shapeless surface of the board or of the cloth.

I liked to start from this technical peculiarity, as I think that, in the case of Antonio Papasso, one should start from here to reach a more concise analysis of his last work and of his current poetics.

Papasso's work is in fact substantially graphic-epidermal, made of small vibrations, unfinished signs, which only a rash observer could mistake for the equivalent or the heritage of the informal. Instead, it is not a question of informal, but of a formativity which-proceeding with accumulation and integration through the subsequent addition of thickness and weft-reaches the constitution of that embryonic core described before, which represents the real array of every new performance.

Within such matrix- which is often unique, but sometimes twofold and split-some curious proliferations move and organize themselves between an almost vegetal world and another definitely more organic one: snake-shaped sometimes, or effloressences similar to seaweeds or lichens; or, more, cored corpuscles I do not know if closer to a magnified appearance of bacteria or cells or to that of insects still at larval stadium.

Mine is, probably, only a reading "à la Rorschach" of these figurations created by the Tuscan artist with very different purposes which are probably very far from every figurative claim. It is a fact, however, that his work reveals undoubtedly an unconscious, oneiric (even surreal, as Roberto Sanesi asserted) element: therefore, an element that could turn towards more exact and more anthropo- or zoo-morphous figurations tomorrow, or towards definitely illusory images and hallucinations obtained by the Deep Ego.

Moreover, the use of colour, too, confirms my opinion, as it always remains extremely cautious and measured, nearly hidden and dormant in this phase of his performing; completely subdued to the necessity of shape and of matericity. In a word, a colour which often shows only the underlining of an exasperated graphism. Except for the few cases in which the entire formal array differs from the background of the paint through a global and unitary colouring where, nonetheless, colour does never reach the distinct purity pertaining to tone-colour, but is always subjected to the needs of the underlying tissue.

Nowadays, however, observing the works of the last two or three years- here exposed-carefully, some other elements of undiscussed vital power struck our attention.

I have been talking, a little while ago, about oval shapes: these have been for a long time the real guides of Papasso's syntax (with a remote recall to the Fontana's "ova"- "eggs"- even if here motivation and substance are substantially different), until they left their place to shapes with shattered lines. During the last period, instead, the shapes which constitute the central core of the paintings were enriched with a further dimension carried out by the enclosure of thin fragments of laces and embroidery, which do not probably have only a materic value - which is evident at first glance - but also a value of "opening" towards the external. n other words: the closed shapes (resulting, as I said, from the overlay and from colourations of the papiers froissés) which- until yesterday- rose lonely in the middle of the colourless surface of the painting (nearly as pale medusas in a colourless sea), find here their prosecution through some embroidered fragments or- in some cases- through cardboard or cloth insertions.

Does it represent a new way to get out of the impenetrable shutness of his ego, a way to break the "egg's shell" or the walls within which the embryo floats immersed in its amniotic fluid? Or not rather an opening a road towards the exterior, towards light, towards a new and different- and maybe more dangerous but more advantageous- communication with the fellow creatures, with society, with the world. 

Gillo Dorfles(*)

(*)Gillo Dorfes (Trieste, 1910) is well known for his studies of aesthetics and custom, and also as an art critic. Many of his publications are textbooks; others have been translated into many foreign languages and are considered classics. We remember: New Rites, new Myths (Italy, 1965), Kitsch (Italy, 1968), The Oscillations of Taste (Italy, 1970), and so on.