Via Mecenate, 77, 20138 Milan, Italy
ARTISTS:
Braco Dimietrevic
Giorgio de Chirico (Collezione Ramo)
Braco Dimitriejevic answers questions from
Irina Zucca Alessandrelli, curator of Collezione Ramo
What is your relationship with drawing and Italian art history of the last century?
I started drawing sketches for my Triptychos Post Historicus installations in the various museums. Every time I went into a museum and went through the collection to choose the painting I would need for the Triptychos Post Historicus series, I would make quick sketches in ink for future installations: a composition of a painting with an object and the fruit I intended to use. Very soon these early sketches became watercolors, which are in fact independent works in their own right. While I do watercolors, I feel a great freedom because these compositions are not limited by the force of cultural conventions, nor by natural forces such as gravity. Often they include a representation of a well-known painting by a great master. Sometimes they include invented, nonexistent paintings in the typical style of an artist such as Picasso and Matisse. I now paint these watercolors completely independent of preparation for exhibitions. I first exhibited these watercolors in Brussels in 1978, along with some photographic work. In that exhibition there were also some drawings from the early 1970s.
Why did you choose this work by Domenico Gnoli?
I have created many Triptychos Post Historicus with works by 20th century Italian artists such as Modigliani, Morandi, De Chirico, Marinetti, Severini in different museums such as the Guggenheim in New York, the Tate Gallery, the Centre Pompidou, the GAM in Turin, etc. The works of these artists acquire new meaning when they are included in my triptychs.
De Chirico has always inspired me. This drawing I chose reminds me of various works I did from his paintings of the metaphysical phase, for example "Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire," which I exhibited at the Pompidou in 1981 or "Metaphysical Composition" for the Ludwig Museum in Cologne in 1984.