Adolfo de Turris

A text written by Prof. Gianpiero Menniti:

The 1900s have not passed. Slyly observe his traces, contemporary epigones of a sleepless, feverish, intense, interrupted world. Which today reaches the unveiling of his visions. You scream in impetus, up to the contemplation of matter, dusty, silent, resigned on the uncertain threshold, at the end of an exhausted time. The 1900s have not passed for those who know how to grasp its silences, left in the valleys of enchantment. Art has foreboding. Now, he discovers its echoes, even slower, as in a solitary journey. They are precious eyes. Like those of Adolfo De Turris, born in 1952, a 20th century painter. He recounts, with refinement, a difficult legacy. He does not try the shortest route: he courageously chooses the most impervious one. Because it's about being authentic. And it seems to hear, from the dawn of the century, Giovanni Pascoli: [...] "The song remains in the valley." (from "The departure of the woodcutter", Canti di Castelvecchio, 1903)

The 20th century is not an accessible legacy.

It lets itself be crossed.

Like the mute presence of a voice: deep, intense, it possesses the feverish eyes of impetus and the stony gaze of time.

He asks for courage: that of melancholy, capable of shaking the path and pushing one to look back, to let oneself be caught by a gust of wind that announces the passage of a forgotten threshold.

This courage is all in the paintings of Adolfo De Turris, an artist who, like many others, in the inflated world of expression on canvas, has been overwhelmed by the barrage of voices and screams that accompanies this crazed and myopic contemporaneity.

Remained on the margins (yet winner of prizes, he has participated in various group exhibitions and created various personal exhibitions) instead deserves that new eyes let themselves be crossed by the atmospheres of his paintings: silent and powerful, they welcome the observer on a journey backwards, cadenced by poetry of nuanced and consistent representations, as is existence in its thousand and contradictory forms.

Thus, De Turris recounts: and here the artist arises.

His stories don't have himself at the top, his personality doesn't emerge as a singular character poured into the pictorial text.

Before others, the artist from Montalbano Jonico - who moved to Milan - understood how much essence of expression comes from a gaze chosen by talent, mastery, the passion of narrating.

The artist becomes an incomparable instrument of worlds.

And never proponent of self-reflection.

If anything, inspired singer, guardian, generous heir to an era that his sensitivity has crossed pausing to feel, to intuit, to understand.

And finally, to express in all the depth of him.

By belonging to you.

Leaving the thresholds of his paintings open for those who want to perceive his own courage.

And like him, they care about the clarity of authenticity.

Thus, "his" Novecento of him becomes common heritage: no lyrical, personal, embodied accent.

But a tension towards the other, the observer, the spectator of a melancholy that has a breath, that whispers, that crosses time to linger in eyes full of curiosity.

Of course, each narrative rests on a background of lyrical origin.

Yet, art becomes such when it manages to signal something that transcends the author.

And the author sees the sign as the overcoming of every border, even and above all of one's own limits, as an echo that saves one from oneself and allows the passage into consciences.

Here: observing his works, I gradually perceived his research backwards, his long-meditated language, inlaid like a necklace of robust workmanship, imposing and enclosed, imbued, soaked with matter, full of thoughts.

He reminded me of the books of the past, those of school, written and laid out with care: they belonged to my mother, daughter of an already mature century.

There are some left.

They have smell, texture, solidity.

For this reason, they represent a contradiction in the age of doubt, of the long nihilistic current.

But they are also the product of the last age of the printed book.

And it is the last age of words and of thought stressed to the extreme: every true philosophy leads to the furthest edge.

Then, the contradiction dissolves, leaving a clear mixture of inspirations to arise, between forces that push on the hardest research and the tender influence of a thought wrapped in the doubt of lightness, where the word and the painting become poetry of the greater immediacy.

Really, with the pictorial texts of De Turris, the observer is astonished in the recalling of verses and paintings that emerge as hints held back by his sensitivity, traces of a feverish, tragic, dense age.

Which?

Many, very many.

Not only those of Pascoli.

Reminiscent of "Noon" (1927) by Carlo Carrà.

And the splendid "Notturno jonico" (2010) by Adolfo De Turris.

--Also those of D'Annunzio's Laudi :

“I was born every morning. / Each of my awakenings / was like a sudden / birth into the light: / astonished my eyes / gazed at the light / and at the world.» From "Laus Vitae"

Which recall "The daughter Anna", one of the many portraits of the second decade of the twentieth century painted by Armando Spadini. That look is still in "The Long Road" painted by Adolfo De Turris in 1988.

And again, by D'Annunzio and always from the "Laudi":

“The sun declines between the heavens and the graves. / Everywhere the inane mist hangs. / Will we hear the trumpets sound at dawn? / Remember and wait.» From "Songs of remembrance and expectation"

Verses inspired by many of De Turris' works: "In the land of volcanoes" (2009),

Then, the reference to a verse of "Acquazzone" taken from the collection "The Magic Flute" by Corrado Govoni:

«Suddenly the sky was covered with gray clouds / ... When one was dazed and staring / as if on the edge of a fiery abyss».

And here, the word turns to "Waiting for next Christmas" which De Turris painted in 2012.

From which still other verses emerge, those of Sergio Corazzini in "The sonnet of the snow" (taken from "Lyrics"):

«... The garden slumbering with melancholy / in the gloomy sweetness of the snow».

But that's not enough.

There is also Sironi from "The family" (1929) in another painting by De Turris: "Great fishermen" from 1989

And here, before continuing, we come to the point that I would like to underline, to the question I asked myself and following which, in answering myself, I decided to write this article: the many pictorial references that appear (I could recall many others, I warned Dalì, Casorati also looked out), observing the works of De Turris, are they attempts at imitation of themes and style or mere quotations?

Well, none of that.

Far from it.

In De Turris' canvases, the traces of his backward journey emerge, a deep-seated sea where he finds the marks left by time.

Then, when he happens to "see" with his cultured and sensitive gaze, the natural creative tension merges with those traces, with those assonances, infusing life into an original style: it is his peculiar interpretation of the 20th century.

For this reason, even the refined echoes of De Chirico are enlivened by a different rendering, in content and expression, like a step beyond, an advance that overcomes the utopia of the past which has returned to being a living sign.

As in the case of "In the extreme sea" and "Untitled", both from 1989.

To get to the root of his pictorial creativity, it is necessary to accept that the thought of De Turris, his singular interpretation of the 1900s, touches every hint of that history of authors, passing not only from the figurative, from "representation" painting but also from "non-figurative", the painting of the "presentation", that vast sea of ​​freedom popularly called abstract art.

De Turris re-reads, lets himself be permeated, re-elaborates and narrates.

The tone is not suffocated over time, but reacts to time by reinvigorating it.

Thus, the "copresence" is the appearance of a century of art still capable of showing a very rich vein of ferment, a hidden vein that the artist from Montalbano Jonico has managed to trace and bring to light.

In this wake, his artistic expression is a real novelty.

But that belongs to a past that never emerged.

A sort of buried treasure that only his evident capacity for introspection in the matter of that art could bring to life.

The "copresence" asserts itself as a truly unique artistic phenomenon, to the point of pushing De Turris towards borders transformed into passage thresholds, towards enchanted expanses of silences left waiting.

Expectation of a conspicuous sensitivity, which this painter undeniably possesses and deeply preserves.

The verses of Montale come to mind (incipit of "Mediterraneo" taken from the famous collection "Ossi di sepia"):

«... Ancient, I am intoxicated by the voice / that comes out of your mouths when they open / like green bells and are thrown back / back and dissolved».

With him, with Adolfo De Turris, a new '900 has truly arisen.

“I think art is one of the deepest expressions of the spirit. Mine is a research into the most wonderful historical passages in the history of art. I have always deliberately dissociated myself from the fashions of the present time. My painting is in desperate need of a vertical time. Everything happens now. The past merges into the present. I no longer have the need to bear witness to the contemporary era. In my paintings there is the whole twentieth century. You will find hints of the historical avant-gardes, but revised with my own personal style. My favorite teachers are many. Picasso, Carrà, De Chirico, Morandi, and many others.”

Adolfo was born in Montalbano Jonico (MT) on February 22, 1952. He graduated from the Art School of Milan. Also in Milan, he attended the Accademia S. Agostino and later the Brera Academy with professors Terruso and then De Valle. He was a pupil of master Arsenio De Boni, a famous landscape painter, and then of master Giovinazzo, who taught him the technique of Flemish painting with glazes.