Yesterday, at Bagni di Lucca’s Casino, the world’s first purpose-built gambling hall, luxuriant with its spread of gold fleur-de-lys set against azure walls, another gamble took place, this time with the surest probability that all participants would win. The ‘Borgo degli Artisti’, the town’s association of artists was re-established and came vividly back into view after some years when it had been disbanded because key players had sadly left the area.
To celebrate this important occasion the three arts of music, poetry and painting combined to create a memorable afternoon.
Music inaugurated with the solo violin of young Elias who has made remarkable progress at Florence’s Cherubini conservatoire. The son of our local handyman, he interspersed the events with pieces ranging from ‘Over the Rainbow’ to a Bach sonata and a Paganini capriccio. Knowing some of these pieces myself, I fully realised the problem of intonation when double-stopping and performing bow acrobatics. I look forward to hearing more from our town’s budding talent.
Poetry was represented by Mara Mucini’s second poetry collection titled ‘Pensieri’. I shared the recent course in creative writing with Mara and realized that she is equally brilliant in writing prose. Her poems are characterised by their disarming directness of expression with a touching honesty and a subtle use of metaphor. It’s easy to write floridly but to shake off the purple prose and feel things as they really are ‘on the pulse’ requires a courageous honesty which Mara has in abudance. They need not only to be read but re-read!
Natalia Sereni was the presenter and a select number of the audience, all poets in their own ‘write’, were asked to read out one of Mara’s poems and make a little comment on it. I felt flattered that I too was asked to contribute.
After the readings we had time to view the artists’ paintings and drawings placed around the Casino’s principal room.
Albert Beach has a long tradition of gracing Bagni di Lucca with his often playful and always colourful pictures and prints. His theme for the exhibition centered around village streets and churches. I enjoyed Albert’s dexterity and feeling for the vernacular architecture of these delightful locations.
Deenagh Miller moves into darker landscapes with her virtuoso touch. Yet here too she captures with sure aim of her often calligraphic pen and almost Fauvist use of colour the essence of so many Italian landscapes. Her creations often allude not only to places but to historical artists’ creations whether they be Piranesi or Michelangelo.
I once attended a course Morena Guarnaschelli gave on drawing mandalas and, thus, immediately connected to her contributions to the show. A consummate watercolourist with an innate sense of structure ,Morena’s use of geometric shapes interweaved with the human face is riveting.
I remember Anna Darlington’s work from the time of the now mythic Bagni di Lucca’s Arts Festival which ran for three consecutive years in the previous decade. In particular I recollect a painting of the sea which was constantly changing as the artist added further memes referring to the never ending number of refugees drowning in the waves of an unrelenting ocean. Anne’s political message underwrites her latest creations in the deep, often dark, colours and in her barren, lonely land and seascapes.
Jenny McIntosh has changed her artistic impulses from painting to sculpture. I think this is a wise move since her better paintings already had a sculpture quality about them. Her heads could connect with some of the details I chanced across when travelling to the Angkor Wat a few years ago or, alternatively, as some wag remarked, be used as book-ends.
TYMO’s installation incorporating inanimate every-day objects into a 3-D twilight-scape was enigmatic to me. Or was this meant to be its puzzling message?
All-in-all the event was dazzling in its profusion of talent. Bagni di Lucca may be a small place of little more than 6000 inhabitants but the amount of creative energy contained within its mountainous confines is remarkable! I wish every good luck to the town’s happily refounded artistic association for a continued future and nurturing of new talent.
From London to La Costa (and Lucca and Beyond) Part Three 