Footprints of art

ABO So, it could be said that, through your work, 2RC has conceptualized art forms.

VR Yes…! Without any doubt, having moved to the various and different parts of the world, in a nomadic way, means starting from a concept of freedom, and in particular, getting rid of the constraints imposed to give value to the graphic work, in a universal sense, for its absolute autonomy.

ABO So which generation of artists (and their names too) has been most in line with your expectations and given the most satisfactory results, as far as you are concerned?

VR No…! I find no difference between the different generations who have suffered and rejoiced with us; Because there hasn't been an artist who hasn't introduced us, almost systematically, into his inspired and secret world; And for this particularity, we gave everything possible with generosity, seeking, for each of them, an autonomous and different path; In any case, every artist, from the first day, has put us in a position to receive, in our hands, their witness as an added value of gratitude which, over time, has achieved our technical and cultural growth.

As for satisfactory results, I should say they were frequently awe-inspiring, giving rise on most occasions to lengthy collaborations.

And I want to add that every edition that comes out of our presses, only for the efforts of the artist and the whole printing house, is at least satisfactory.

If we then enter with snapshots on our path, I can mention the name of Fontana, due to its integral purity; Burri, for his intransigence and continuous research beyond the subject, demanding the impossible from us; Capogrossi, for having whetted Eleonora's appetite for color; Chillida, for making us think of Segovia during the technical process, for the musicality of the artist's gesture during the preparation for a splendid aquatint; And then, Sonia Delaunay, Vasarely and Louise Nevelson who made us enter her shadows.

It must also be said that for Francesco Clemente, it is so natural to work in watercolor that he made no effort to approach an engraving technique, a watercolor aquatint that is close to his way of working.

With the artist, we have often faced projects in extreme conditions and the absolute trust and maximum integration, during the preparation and engraving phases, have always made us overcome obstacles which then became a real baggage of experience.

Clemente himself, in the spring of 2014, came to work in our 2RCCAFA engraving department in Beijing - born in 2009 with the traveling exhibition "Double Dream of Art" - and since the first brushstroke of acid that he placed on the slab - two meters by one meter - strengthened by the experience of many years of shared work, everything started again as if we had never stopped. Furthermore, in that climate that Francesco knows well, he felt at ease, also appreciating our graphics produced with his Chinese colleagues, and in particular, Liu Ye's “Pinocchio”.

ABO What difference is there between European and American artists in the panorama of your production?

VR In the years in which we started the studio in New York, in Broome Street, it was the moment in which Andy Warhol who had messed up the cards, especially in the world of graphics, because he never put a single hand on a plate or on a lithographic stone, he only gave splendid ideas very well implemented by his collaborators in screen printing, lithography and offset with certainly not limited numbers.

American artists, including Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Francis and George Segal, returned to us under the commercial situation in their prevailing market, sure of finding transparency and ethics, and the possibility of printing large graphic works in engraving. And it was the high production of large format graphics, in engraving, that distinguished our production between the United States and Europe.

ABO Warhol is the Raphael of American mass society, who gave elasticity to the consumer society and, by crippling himself, paradoxically developed the unique value of repetition.

VR I think Warhol's revolution has given us the absolute need to return to an ETHICAL form due to the clarity that the market requires, especially in graphic art which, without the necessary rigor, ends up giving value to everything and nothing. especially in the multiple arts.

ABO What does 2RC’s expertise stem from?

VR Our expertise stems above all from curiosity and modesty.

I am very curious about everything that surrounds me, while Eleonora, in addition to a right curiosity, is absolutely modest in everything, except in the management of color, where she is sure that the research in this precise field, for her, will never end. , because growth cannot stop.

ABO I’d say that 2RC confirms Leonardo da Vinci’s belief that Art is mental Form.

Has this been put into practice more with European or American artists?

And which generation has applied this concept?

VR Surely everything starts with European artists who spread, by budding, in the United States, creating new and vital movements such as Action Painting and Pop Art; Everything that has happened in the following years up to now; We have experienced the various and different movements of art on its borders, because while working in France, in Graham Sutherland's studio, we also worked in Los Angeles with Sam Francis: an artist in whom the mental form was deeply open and instinctive.

At the same time, with Pierre Alechinsky, a serious and continuous collaboration project was developed, only after having spent a long period together in Bodrum, Turkey, where the need to approach work in such a different environment, had become a an obligation that, over time, has turned into a stimulating attendance for both.

This continuous nomadism of ours was necessary in order to plan an artistic process, in some way identified, during our growth; All done with great optimism and perhaps recklessness but, when you find yourself at the side of an artist like Henry Moore, in a printing house organized in Pietrasanta, exclusively for him, with an almost childlike desire to produce a series of graphic works, trusting only of us, I think it can be considered an act of great value, to which we have responded with a series of etchings, aquatints, drypoints and splendid matrices of very large dimensions with which we have printed the various subjects in a very limited edition.

ABO 2RC is the fruit borne of a couple of artificers and not artisans.

What is the difference between an artisan and an artificer?

VR The craftsman tries to sell the technique he knows best, often limited, without knowing the real needs of the artist, and this allows him to easily orient him to quickly produce the edition, as far as his normal competence is.

The artist tries to explore the world of the artist in order to identify and suggest, in the various engraving techniques, the space of autonomy in which the artist can find himself at ease but, even more, knowing him thoroughly, providing him with tools where to find a new creative way that enriches and surprises him, to the point of starting a process of continuous research.

What we have tried to teach our young people in China and in Viareggio - with the activity of the 2RC Officina Contemporaneo Laboratory Association - is precisely this: "It is not the technique itself that can establish the profession of engraver or printer, but how much give space to modesty to never feel satisfied, especially in the judgment you give to the quality of your work ".

The really splendid thing that has emerged in our groups of young people, is their ability to integrate so well that they manage to do things together which they would never be able to do as individuals.

ABO I believe that the difference is in the fact that the craftsman works on confirmation, while the craftsman, and therefore the couple Eleonora and Valter Rossi, I would say worked on the possibility of producing, collaborating with the artist, something in the Leonardesque sense of word, which does not pre-exist.

With your collaboration, which artist, more than any other, produced this infidelity to their own work? Joyful infidelity, naturally...

VR The most surprising was Fontana because, in every sense, it was so important for us to know him and hang out with him, because without him, perhaps we would never have left; When we met him, we were in an embryonic phase, very open and free but modest for the preparation we had from the high school / academy, and we realized that, if we wanted to do something important in the world of graphic art, we had to start from scratch. Lucio gave us the great opportunity to enthusiastically set out on the path of knowledge, making us understand the idea of ​​"spatial concept", order, simplicity and harmony in a space without limits, in a conceptual way.

Lucio Fontana, in the various editions produced with us, has always been faithful to his creative world because paper had taken on a specific weight of its own for him, absent in the other works he created, and perhaps this can be considered a subtle infidelity.

ABO So, one could say that 2RC, paradoxically, has always steered clear of reproducibility, coming close to a unicum.

VR Yes…! It is true and this is what I think because, for each individual subject, the engraving techniques with the different possible and imaginable variants, start with a certain number of matrices that the artist elaborates and works directly, and of which he must be able to imagine the result. , when printing is finished; Therefore, for all the time devoted to the elaboration and the initial printing phase, the artist experiences an atmosphere of excited waiting before reaching the print voucher; And only at that moment does an editorial process begin.

The matrices, according to the print voucher, are handled by one or more specialized printers - according to the size - forming a solidarity group that assumes all the responsibilities since, a single error, even minimal, during the printing process, it would affect the quality of the result.

When we observe the final work, we are definitely not faced with a reproduction, but rather a unicum that nonetheless leaves behind, as evidence, the cancelled matrices that gave birth to everything.

ABO At the same time, 2RC has its own objective modernity since, by going beyond the principle of solitary creation, it creates access to a collective elaboration, hence the transition from the individual I to the collective We.

VR Yes…! We are aware of this to the point that we are trying to teach this to young people; Because the only way to truly participate is to transfer your knowledge to the artist, without him realizing it, and at the same time, giving the impossible, we learn from the artist things that make us grow.

ABO So, in some way 2RC also works behind the artist’s back, without their realising it, by means of dialogue?

VR The dialogue was fundamental with most of the artists we met; Constructive for a good fifty percent and even necessary for other artists, as with Enzo Cucchi, with whom a profound and inexhaustible dialogue was indispensable that has always led us to a targeted analysis of the projects and problems to be overcome; Only with the utmost collaboration and transparency, it was possible to give life to what the artist was trying to achieve; What in months of dialogue we could hardly focus on, became evident when the artist faced the slabs, often of exceptional dimensions and increasingly complex, but Enzo had read the path so well in his mind, to face with ease every obstacle because, at that moment, that precise graphic work was a real necessity for him.

ABO In the end, a kind of morganatic marriage is created between artist and artificer.

With which artists did this morganatic marriage work the best, thrive, and remain over time, not ending in divorce?

VR I must therefore go back to talking about Burri with whom there has been a technical, qualitative and also inspirational progress that is now in history; Alberto has never repeated himself, even in the techniques we suggested and adapted to the various moments of his research; Certain drastic decisions, such as punishing certain preciousness inherent in the technique, surprising for us but, often for him, intrusive to the point of chastising them and minimizing the exposed part, leaving only a few small traces… vibrant.

Then I cannot avoid mentioning Afro, for the reasons I have given above.

And many other artists with whom we have collaborated for decades, such as Victor Pasmore who, with graphics, was forced to enter a system in which he was prevented from being messy, as he sometimes was in his painting work, and transparencies with the different aquatints that we put at his disposal, in painting, he could not get them.

Whereas Francesco Clemente always knew that he could count on us and, at that point, took advantage. He knew that we were ready and willing to make huge efforts in totally unsocial hours.

ABO But why are artists like children? Are they cannibals?

I am a vampire, and that’s different, because a critic then redeems himself through writing, reflection and the originality of his theories. But initially he needs the artist's blood.

How did you manage to contain the cannibalism of the artist?

VR By establishing clear-cut periods of intense work in our printing press, or in the place where the artist felt most comfortable.

Pierre Alechinsky was one of the first because, knowing his work and after some meetings in his studio in Bougival, we realized that we were ready for a responsible and perhaps interesting technical approach, given the particular graphic vision of his Cobra images but, even more in the propensity that the artist, right from the start, had highlighted, to the point that we decided to reach him, with our boat, in Bodrum in Turkey, stowing the slabs ready to be worked, with a technique studied ad hoc for him .

We stopped off for more than a month, and there “Mare Nostrum” and “Arbre de la vie” came into being.

The sequel, at least exciting, was important, with the result obtained with the engraving “Aveuglette” which convinced Pierre to demobilize his atelier to give more space to the kitchen, making his wife Miki happy; And systematically, in the years to come, he found the basis for satisfying his need to do graphics in our printing house in Rome.

ABO While I understand the ease of dialogue with Pierre Alechinsky, the question is, “How did you work with the informal generation?”

How did you manage to desiccate the pictorial material of that generation?

VR Stimulating them…! Only after having seen our graphic works by the artists they esteemed, made with innovative techniques that we had developed to convince them; I repeat, they stimulated their curiosity which is always present in the artist.

But the fundamental thing is our absolutely immense and boundless passion for modern and contemporary art.

Given these premises, it has never been particularly difficult for us to convince artists from all tendencies to find the right path together.

ABO Walter Benjamin wrote "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”.

Does multiplication have a bearing on the role of art?

VR Yes…! In my opinion, it affects in every sense, especially when there is no clarity and transparency, and here is the great unsolved problem, the total lack of education; To educate one must start from the school, from teachers, critics, gallery owners, publishers and printers; And perhaps the artists are the most responsible for the lack of credibility that the graphic work represents.

Finding ourselves in a world where the importance of the different techniques is not known at all, in order to be able to distinguish them, where the experts give, more often than not, summary and often deliberately false indications. On this basis, how can the market react? How can the graphic work affect its true role in the total confusion of this market?

ABO I suspect that you have educated the artists, too!

VR Of course…! In particular, in the necessary discretion of what was happening inside the printing house, we had actually created watertight compartments, where each artist had his permanent studio, where he was protected in his privacy, even material, and was never shown a proof of only one artist to others, if not after the print voucher; And a proof never came out, unless it was stamped on the back with the words “copy for viewing only”; This rigidity has always given artists an atmosphere of seriousness.

We were once creating an etching with Giuseppe Capogrossi, for the “Graphical Presences” series. But in those same days, we were also in the process of printing a poster for Rothko, in lithography, for his great exhibition in Venice, at Cà Pesaro.

Capogrossi saw in the sheets he had just printed something that enlightened him and asked me if it was possible to have a copy, because he had glimpsed a possible solution for the basic background of his image that he was making with us; It is obvious that I satisfied him, since it was a poster then printed in offset; I am giving this example because it allows me to underline that Capogrossi's large engraving was never made, due to his sudden death; And the master plate was donated to the National Gallery of Modern Art, now on display.

ABO In what way does dimension reflect upon and condition the graphic work?

VR The dimension is only conditioned by the technical limit which, as I have already explained at the beginning, is evident in the difference between the figure of the craftsman and that of the craftsman; And the latter has different horizons and goals, to the point of never having to say no ... to any challenge presented to him.

When at the beginning of the 60s, the artists felt the need to tackle very large works, this operation further distanced the world of graphics, accustomed to expecting small dimensions that, up to that moment, were produced with ease, from an often reproductive market.

However, it has been demonstrated that the large graphic works produced by various artists stand up to comparison even with unique pictorial works, having a life of their own in any space whatsoever, including museums.

ABO There are artists who by attitude favor graphics, a linguistic attitude; And I go back to the example of Lucio Fontana who has a modularity in his gestures; But, on the other hand, there are artists like Francis Bacon who, on the other hand, due to the iconography they develop, seem to tend every time to a work that touches the epiphany, the apparition; Does this appearance boil down to the graphics?

And how was this image then transmuted?

VR Surely, Fontana's example fits perfectly because we immediately found ourselves in his world; While Bacon, only to approach him and propose to work together - even with my peremptory and stubborn insistence that began as early as 1975 - with a first attempt, absolutely naive, which demonstrated our lack of preparation for an artist who did not want a part of us but all our future know. We met him at his rare exhibitions in London, Paris and New York where, in a relaxed atmosphere - but I don't think so for him - we managed with surprise to get back on track, but never definitive; But…! Maybe someday…! Yup…!

It was Pierre Levée, art director at the Marlborough gallery in New York, who championed the idea of an editorial project to which Bacon was very attached, then creating a triptych with us.

The difficulty was being able to work in an image dimension that was large enough to make the artist feel at ease, using the same usual creative spaces, without limiting his graphic work to a reductive image, because all his graphic works small in size, made with other publishers, often in reproductive form, remain, in my opinion, works without the necessary emotional involvement. The project then started from a previous work of his, as expecting Bacon to start from scratch, on a copper plate and working in reverse, as the technique requires, would have been an impossible dream to achieve, while, with the possibility of to have a base from which to take a cast and transport it to the slab, as the great artists of the past did when they prepared the cartoons to have the trace of the designed work, and then to be able to tread it for the fresco technique, this made it possible to challenge.

We had prepared the large-sized base plate for black, ready with the aquatint on which we had transferred the imprint of his image, making his intervention as easy as possible during the engraving phases, as far as his times and methods allowed us. of work, without ever making our weight and almost our presence felt, leaving him maximum freedom on the black plate and on the large backgrounds. Obviously we helped him a lot, preparing the plates that would have served to be complementary, so his effort was to give his great space for attention and critical judgment in the various passages; Really gratifying for us, because his time was very limited as, already in the morning, he lived in a world impossible for us to imagine.

His spaces were absolutely unmanageable.

But the orange created for that first subject gave Bacon exceptional faith in us and, from that moment on, the tension lessened and the rest of the process was all plain sailing.

ABO During 2RC’s productive nomadism, you have traversed many currents, groups, languages: from the Informal to Action Painting, from New Dada to Pop Art and from Arte Povera to Transavanguardia.

Did any one of these movements more strongly favour the construction of art as a mental form?

VR It must be said that we started from infatuations with artists who were our points of reference, already from high school, born from our strong curiosity to understand the parallels that bind art, starting from the past to the contemporary, to then find ourselves, fatally , in our world; The same of Lucio Fontana and Alberto Burri.

This was a great opportunity for us, because it allowed us, in a short time, that technical achievement in order to then be able to aim at the various movements, so different from each other, that you mention.

All extremely engaging and ultimately rewarding.

And I must add that the ease of physically operating with our presence, in the various and different fabrics of contemporary art in Europe, in the United States, in Japan and, in the last ten years, in China, has opened up an infinite horizon to which look out, giving us a magnificent human and professional experience.

ABO How did you select artists, choose them?

VR It occurred by degrees, starting precisely with those artists who were part of our DNA.

Figuration entered our attention with Graham Sutherland and we started working with him for a nomadic curiosity that we have always had, aimed at creating a small printing house in Menton and living a surreal world with him, as bad with nature as it can be. nature itself; In this delightful space, we lived moments of strong intensity with Graham who enjoyed our technical knowledge because, despite having been a master in engraving techniques, he did not know the aquatint, and his curiosity led us with him to imagine and then create the folder. "Bees", and then the Bestiary of "Apollinaire"; Both very difficult paths but he took us, in spite of himself, into the world of a surrealist figuration, imagining what he could still do.

At that time, we did not yet have the courage to enter the world of figuration, which we had deliberately neglected, also due to the intense political contrasts between the figurative and abstract worlds.

With Guttuso against this artist… and that one against Guttuso...

Argan and Trombadori....

Dorazio against all of them…

ABO So, figuration was the fruit of a committed mentality, politically speaking, and abstraction was seen as escapism?

VR The real problem was that the abstractionists did not collaborate with each other, they were each in their own world, they never made a true solidarity group as you were able to form with the transavantgarde; There was the distinct feeling of being in a limbo for only strange connoisseurs of abstract artists, while the figuration has also formed a political body, albeit with enormous differences in quality and paths, with surprising acute notes such as Marino Marini, Giacomo Manzù, Renato Guttuso and others, not to mention Giorgio Morandi and others of his caliber that will remain in the history of art.

ABO Manzù, certainly, is always graphic, and even in his sculptures he is linear.

You have achieved what I have called the "Double Dream of Art"; Starting from the artist's dream, you have come to produce the double dream, that is to say a dimension which, not being made of pure reproduction, has also favored the spread of art.

Do you think this is a political function of art? In a good sense?

VR In fact, for Manzù doing graphics was natural, he had an instinctive spontaneity, his gesture has always been linear, clear and incisive as he knew how to crystallize it in his sculptural forms. For Manzù the sign was enough to create quality.

Without doubt, high quality graphics that adhere to the rules of transparency favour the spread of art, particularly when the soaring prices of original works curb interest, above all among young people.

I am sure that only the clarity and transparency of the techniques and operators would give the right space to quality, drastically reducing the confusion that spreads all over the world which, with new digital technologies, becomes uncontrollable.

ABO So, shall we say that it is a facility that also diminishes the aura of the work?

VR Certainly, what comes out of these new technologies, more often than not, are images that do not have a genetic character imprint, they are interventions that anyone and anywhere in the world could do; There is no autonomy, there is no ability to instinctively improvise with a spontaneous gesture; Because, in this case, the real master of the image is technology.

ABO In your experience, what responsibility do you have as artificers and not artisans?

VR The responsibility of being transparent and honest, and trying to make those who are attracted to the idea of owning a work of art, understand that it is important to know who made it and how it is made.

This is the moment when a concrete and unconditional response is needed.

In fact, we are promoting a new initiative with Publishers, Printers, Artists, Academies and High schools: “Ethical Archive”.

We are trying to give the maximum responsibility to artists, publishers and printers to declare to the public, with the utmost transparency, the requirements of graphic works and to enable them to finally qualify a sector that awaits nothing else, only clarity.

ABO How have you established the numbering and numerical quantity of the work over the decades?

VR In ninety percent of cases, this is established by the technique used.

For example, by simplifying the engraving, the etching allows, depending on the metal used, to obtain editions of even a few hundred; With this technique, it is essential to be ethical: Make a single edition and, after the signature and numbering established by the artist, in his presence, cross the plate.

The techniques are many and if, summarizing, I think of the dry point that, surely, even with all the care and attention, reaching the quota of 50 prints is already a good result; But, already after the first ones, the ones that follow get more and more tired; In this case, it is the artist who decides how many to number and sign.

On the other hand, when you engrave an aquatint plate, with the right attention, you can, at the most, print ninety or one hundred good ones. It is rare to be able to produce a greater number; During the inking and cleaning phases, the plates inexorably wear out; And then, they are subjected to the pressure of the printing press, to highlight the more subtle values ​​traced by the artist, which are absolutely necessary and are the real life for quality engraving.

ABO From all this, it follows that 2RC has also championed a non-mechanical value: "sensitivity".

How has this value been developed in your work?

VR Sensitivity is the fundamental condition to be able, in all circumstances, to give the artist what he expects of you, to the point of surprising him; In fact, it has been a continuous progress for all the artists who have frequented us; And also for us, because the real and visible results have demonstrated it, and it is our great safety valve that gives us the real strength and guarantee to go on, with the same method, for many more years, with our artist friends. wherever they are.

ABO Has this element favoured your relationship more with European artists or with artists from other continents?

VR There is no difference because, when necessary, we were always able to relocate in a flash, with machines, equipment and sometimes our young printers, too.

We went to New York, where we opened a genuine printing press in Broome Street: an incredible move which, right from the start, took us into a world that was completely different, yet unbelievably exciting and extremely positive for our growth.

With Helen Frankenthaler we produced an etching, “Broome Street at Night” which, as soon as you see it, makes you think of New York City. And that's what I saw every night from my window.

With Nancy Graves, as a ritual, Rome began to work in our studio at the Baths of Caracalla where, in the garden and from what nature, in addition to the Roman ruins, suggested to him, his path of work on the slabs began; Knowing, a priori, that those plates would pass through our New York studio where, surely, they would be reread and reworked to make them feel only his; In the end, the plates, after the print voucher, returned to Rome for the printing of the edition.

We feel fortunate to have had these opportunities - the right environment, with the right people, at the right moment.

ABO In the 50s and 60s there was this divide between figuration and abstraction; Then, for example with Pop Art, we arrived at an absolutely recognizable iconography, both because it produced images linked to everyday life, and because the idea of ​​overcoming the uniqueness of the sign or form is also in the poetics of this current. .

Did this help your work?

VR Undoubtedly, and to an extraordinary degree!

ABO With whom, for example?

VR With George Segal, initially, we had some doubts because he was a sculptor of plastic, three-dimensional, aggressive forms, and in his works there is a tragic Jewish world and, knowing the character, you realize what he produced and why has plastered; In order to have it with us in Rome, in 1980, we had printed a first bas-relief and, subsequently, a series of 5 subjects for the Metropolitan Museum of NY; Splendid three-dimensional objects, but far from the world of graphics, where I hoped to be able to bring them; We just had to find the right path.

When Segal came to Rome with all his family, to work with us, we stayed three days without really knowing what to do; Then, one morning I said to myself: “But… sorry… He makes the casts of people for his works”, “why can't we let ourselves be tread on the slabs, as models?”.

I have prepared a suitable technique in which He would roll us on the plate, and when we touched it, we left the imprint; With this new technique that I had invented, once it had been pickled and engraved, we appeared on the plate in an enlarged vision, like in a cartoon that stretches; George then reduced this disproportion given by the expansion, closing the parts with acid-resistant paint, with a black that was the background, making us come out almost proportionate, because suddenly the field of vision had narrowed.

ABO So graphics, even in your case, challenges two-dimensionality and takes on a three-dimensional form planned by the artist?

VR After this series of Blue Jeans, I was wondering what we could do next with George, until the day we walked into his studio in New Jersey, and I saw a beautiful little pencil drawing on paper; And I ask: “but is this your design? Did you make any other similar drawings? "; He opens a chest of drawers and comes out with a series of splendid drawings, even very large ones.

This sparked a new and different pretext for employing us

Thus was born the series of portraits, engraved by the artist in our New York studio, coming for over a month, every day in the morning and leaving late in the afternoon; He worked with us, on each plate, creating a series of beautiful portraits that reach three-dimensionality, in a Renaissance world.

While, in cases like Arnaldo Pomodoro, where the plastic relief was an absolute necessity, we necessarily had to find technical solutions that would solve the problem of holding the paper to the enormous pressure of the press, to reach all the steps and plans designed, desired and obtained. in the clay; Natural material on which Arnaldo had the greatest experience to then obtain the matrices which, in terms of size and colors, have put us to the test for years.

ABO Did the contamination between abstract and figurative, which was developed by Transavanguardia, in some way also create a fluidity in your relationship with artists?

VR Of course, at the beginning I had some difficulties, but it was not because of their way of painting, it was the characters that led us to make certain work decisions; With Francesco Clemente, with Enzo Cucchi in a totally different way and, lastly, Sandro Chia who allowed us to measure ourselves in his particular and personal figuration; And in 2014, we started the experimentation from where the project of the book "Six Songs" was born, then published in 2017.

A couple of years earlier, in China, we worked with Zhang Xiaogang, a very particular artist, precious for the details and transparencies of the signs that bind the light through the colors, in a transparent, almost fatuous way; For him, we had to bring the value of aquatint to the extremes of lightness, almost impalpability, to revive his world of tradition and dreams.

This prior technical experience helped us give Sandro the possibility of letting his characters live in the right atmosphere, his fundamental form of poetry.

In 1990, Francesco Clemente introduced us to Julian Shnabel, an extravagant and volcanic character, very interesting in his work, as in his life; And he managed to convince us to organize a studio in Montauk NY, where the artist was able to instinctively give vent to three enormous diptychs of great graphic value.

ABO I believe that my proposal to exhibit the plates, the matrices, also favours a highly commendable interpretation of 2RC’s work , in that this is tangible evidence, and I think one could say that you started from sculpture to arrive at painting.

VR Each matrix is ​​concretely solid and, depending on the thickness of the metal used, it is possible to create even a low relief but, the real magic is that, with the different techniques that the artist has at his disposal, he forgets most of the sometimes, his pictorial or sculptural world to arrive in an autonomously only graphic world.

ABO The exposure of the master plates, which are also the sign of a creative reality, is the trace of the artist's need to go almost through the graffiti to arrive at the production of the final form; And this, it reminds me, if we can say so, of the archaic nature of the creation of art, just like the sign that is found in the caves, the need that the artist had at the time to represent the hunt to get to the prey; And it seems to me a circular conclusion in the 2RC experience, as starting from the primitive to arrive at the contemporary.

VR The plates you are talking about are the artist's fingerprints, the original is that, but you have to see it - in case the subject is in color - composed of the various plates for the colors necessary for his imagination, and therefore it is the formal imprint, the decisive imprint, the true character is there as a whole.

Then it is transferred like a sort of transfusion onto paper, for different interpretations, but the creative original is that.

ABO The matrix plates that we exhibit are precisely the proof of how we start from the imprint of the artist's imagination, a solitary imprint to then arrive at the mental thing, the form, the edition, which is the fruit of this relationship between the artist and the maker.