Via Privata Massimiano, 25, 20134 Milan, Italy
ARTISTS:
Francesco Simeti
Enrico Baj (Collezione Ramo)
Francesco Simeti answers questions from
Irina Zucca Alessandrelli, curator of the Collezione Ramo
What is your relationship with drawing and Italian art history of the last century?
Drawing has always been part of my artistic practice. However, it falls into the private sphere, into a more personal and intimate dimension. An aspect of the work that I do not necessarily share with the public but instead is a tool for developing new ideas, for fixing memories in my journals, for taking notes. There's definitely an interest in twentieth-century Italian art though not of an exclusive kind. So much of my work consists precisely in revisiting the past, the history of art belonging to different periods and places and reworking and contaminating different elements of it. In this sense I can say that the Italian twentieth century is an important part of my alphabet.
Why did you choose this work by Baj?
His drawing struck me immediately because of its assonance with certain fragments of images I am working with at the moment. Images precisely taken from the history of art, images of water, waves, eddies, currents. Part of this research is on display here and another still in progress. But at a closer look Baj's "wave" turned out to be a portrait of a woman. A visual deception that surely belongs to my language. I could not choose otherwise.