Klon
Nocivelli Prize 2020
English translation generated with AI from the original Italian text.
I would have no hesitation in saying that KLON/spighe, by Francesco Ciavaglioli, is a figurative painting, yet one underpinned by an abstract syntax, since it results from a single form repeated across the surface like a kind of pattern. I could also say that KLON/spighe is a painting in which the figure plays with decoration – a dangerous and fascinating word that opens onto a very wide spectrum of associations, from certain ancient and primal forms (such as the vine scroll on Roman sarcophagi and mosaics, which stands for the whole natural world) to the more contemporary universe of kitsch.
The word decoration also suggests a “carefree” approach to painting, one able to sidestep the problems raised by subject and composition and to exceed the limits of the picture, contaminating different supports, as happens in the case of Ciavaglioli, whose work unfolds through paintings and drawings, but also environmental interventions.
KLON/spighe is a small-to-medium-sized painting (and – why not – a genre painting) whose subject results from a studied composition: the repetition of an ear of wheat taken from a medieval botany book, a repetition that takes place on the surface but also opens onto a slight articulation in depth, produced by the overlapping of four different rows of ears.
The subject of KLON/spighe, therefore, seems to me to be landscape, but a landscape generated by two opposing forces or tensions: one “of the surface”, made of mechanical gestures following the rhythm of the composition, flat areas of colour and impersonal brushstrokes; and another, contrary one that pushes the image into depth, with inevitably more material and vibrant brushstrokes, diagonal fields that divide the image into zones of light and shadow, and a highly articulated range of tones (greens, whites and greys) that surrender to the lyrical possibilities of landscape.