"The chromatic power of light" by Giorgio Bonomi (2015) The Greek poet Hesiod wrote: “[…] Verily at the first Chaos came to be”1; John’s Gospel states: “... in the beginning was the Word”2. Analysing Raimondo Galeano’s works, we could dare: “...in the beginning is the light” also considering that God, the Prime Mover, is often represented as “light” or “rays of light”, but we are not dealing with cosmology, art is our focus. It is interesting to point out that artists have always tried to give an artistic form to light; an example could be the three-dimensionality which after long researches was represented by means of the perspective technique. To be concise, we can state that light with its strength and power was at first depicted by Caravaggio and Rembrandt and later the French painter Georges de La Tour, whose mastery was not soon recognized, wonderfully portrayed an interior lighted by candlelight. In more recent times, it is worth remembering the Impressionists who were determined to deepen their knowledge of light and colour in order to obtain better results in their paintings and William Turner who had even previously tried to pursue the same aim though less consciously. In Italy Giacomo Balla worked on this theme particularly between 1909 and 1911, when he painted his Lampada ad arco. Since then a lot of artists have tried to give an expression to every form of light: neon light, Wood lamp, laser, but in most cases they dropped the idea. Raimondo Galeano is definitely inserted in this experimental flow but what makes his artistic experience particularly interesting and authentic is that he combines an original and innovative technique with a profound and meaningful poetic. This artist makes his paintings and sculptures with seemingly simple materials and methodologies. He uses to spread on their surface special pigments which are white3 at a first glance but if the works are wrapped into the darkness there will be an explosion of colours and forms. This is exactly what he does: “painting by means of light”, that is to say, his works of art appear completely achromatic in a lighted setting but later, in the dark and by means of a simple lighting source, they will be seen in all their chromatism, as regards as both composition and images which can be either abstract or figurative. There is something more to be highlighted: only through a “slow perception” we are able to grasp the various meaningful levels contained in his works just like it happens with other “light painters”, the Impressionists; the diverse intensity in lighting frequencies provokes several changes in colours to the point that there can be three-dimensional effects, thus anticipating the recent 3D technology. To strength his desire to “write by means of light” the artist, who deliberately avoids freehand drawing, makes use of “foto-grafia”, etymologically meaning “light-writing”, as a starting point for his works to be completed with the subjects he is going to paint. Galeano started his career as a painter in the 1960s at the well known “Scuola Romana of Piazza del Popolo”, whose main representatives were Franco Angeli, Tano Festa, Mario Schifano. This school played a profound influence on the artist above all as regards some particular choices of images and iconographical products but he was also greatly affected by the thriving atmosphere of the 1970s when the so called arte povera was acquiring an international fame and analytical painting was gaining importance as a reaction to the artistic crisis of those years; the latter, in contrast to Minimalism and Conceptualism, aimed at reassessing painting by deconstructing and recreating it starting from its most elementary components4. In accordance to this cultural background, Galeano has given up “traditional” elements like tubes of paint just like Giorgio Griffa has done abolishing frames or Pino Pinelli “giving up” canvases and “spreading” his painting on walls. As the artist states: “I was born a painter and as a painter I would like to be remembered […] I wanted to demonstrate] painting hadn’t lost its function (as a lot of artists used to think), on the contrary it was going to revive through my works! […] In other words, what I really aimed at was freeing myself from colours in order to save painting in itself also avoiding common and ordinary products”5. Since then Galeano has been experiencing his peculiar artistic adventure using an instrument which is innovative from a technical as well as an aesthetic and poetic point of view: light. This element which has been there since the origin of man’s life and anthropological-cultural development is the focus in his creative process. The artist declares: “It is light which gives form and colour. I just give form and colour to light”6 thus simply clarifying his poetic vision. From a more scientific point of view, it is necessary to point out that if it is light to give colour to everything, it is also true that colours depend on the molecular structure on which light falls and on the perceptive process which is subject to the physic-psychic apparatus receiving it. Man perceives forms and colours by means of a physical structure involving eyes and brain, dogs only have a black and white perception and colour-blind people perceive colours in a different way. A great part of modern philosophy is based on the principle of Esse est percipi by George Berkeley7, that is to say things only exist if they are perceived; light exists no matter who watches even if we must say it doesn’t exist for blind people. Without perception there is no light but without light there is no visual perception. Waving or corpuscular – science has accepted both the theories – according to Galeano’s art, light hits the canvas prepared with the special pigments and makes colours and forms emerge from it. Light changes as time passes by, day by day, from sunrise to sunset, or, in a wider perspective, from spring to winter; in the same way Galeano’s works are affected by the flow of time. They can be seen as “daily works”, like “dark shadows”, the negative side of analogical films, “sinopie” without colour; or as “nightly works”, in all their chromatic and lighting splendour. Together with this key aspect of luminescence, it is worth considering Galeano’s choice of subjects which vary from portraits to cities, from landscapes to abstractions, that is to say, the artist represents “simple” and “common” themes but he warns: “I enjoy dealing with trivial themes because by interpreting them in my way I can turn them into original things”8. This allows a better understanding of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s sentence: “Profondity has to be hidden. Where? On the surface”9. Visitors are fascinated by the atmosphere Galeano’s works emanate; they feel exactly in the middle between consciousness and dreaminess and this is when light turns to be an operating mighty able to perceive man’s origins: “Fiat lux and lux facta est”10 (God said: “Let there be light”; he willed it, and at once there was light). They can experience contrasting emotions which vary from serene sensations to moments of profound and even disquieting thoughts and different lighting settings since they find themselves in a clear or dazzling light, in the twilight or in the darkness, in a dark night or in a starry one. When the subject is a portrait, often it is a famous person’s face to be painted and it always happens that the observer feels watched by the picture instead of simply watching it. This peculiarity depends on the power of art. The reversing effect consisting in the “observer” becoming “observed” derives both from the lighting technique employed by the artist and his drawing ability which allows him to turn a portrayed eye into something real and living. This is particularly true when watching the picture of the great physicist Fabiola Giannotti or the one portraying Audrey Hepburn who seems to ask something the observer is not able to answer; not to think of the picture of Shapiro whose eyes seem to scan the observer expecting something from the outside world or the one of Lucio Dalla who is portrayed while wearing dark glasses thus preventing the observer from watching him or even being watched by him. Galeano’s portraits do communicate us a wide range of emotions and feelings, always reminding us of the profound meanings of great people’s lives: an example could be the picture of Pier Paolo Pasolini who appears disquieting in his wrinkles and glance. Of great beauty and interest are the portraits of Nobel Peace Prize winners11 among which it is worth mentioning those of Mother Teresa, showing her touching attitude, Aung San Suu Kyi, having a very sad sight, Desmond Tutu and Barak Obama, sharing quite a pensive mood, the Dalai Lama appearing as if expecting something and Nelson Mandela being in a state of wise serenity. Sometimes the artist is particularly ironic as in Balocco, a portrait which not only has the “nightly” and “daily” version but can be split up into pieces and re-built, exactly as it happens with the so called “gioco del quindici” game. Some other times he is even cynical when he turns a beautiful face into a mask or even a skull as in the case of Marilyn Monroe’s portrait. Even when Galeano deals with works belonging to classical culture or to the history of art he never gives up his irony. La Gioconda, a picture a lot of artists have “played” with, like Duchamp, is set by Galeano in various settings, behind a window with shutters to be opened or closed thus doubling the hiding effect of the daily version; La ragazza con l’orecchino di perla, by Jan Vermeer dating back to 1666, also known as La ragazza col turbante by means of a word game is turned by Galeano into: Ragazza conturbante! Although Galeano is really keen on portraying people, he has also dealt with sociological themes like in Panni stesi, Dialogues, or the littorina in Muraca. Not to be forgotten are his “tributes”, especially those payed to Calabria, his place of origin, mainly landscape paintings like Lisa, il bianco e la Calabria; and I Girasoli, a poetic production which obviously reminds us of Van Gogh. Galeano’s polyhydric abilities allow him to cope with figurative, informal, abstract subjects or even holy representations like Resurrection in which an original Cross is represented without any rhetoric and, rigorously only in the dark, Christ’s face appears in a whirling of lighting and colourful corpuscles, again making the observer feel strong emotions. Also interesting are Italian icons such as the Ferrari or the Vespa, again represented by means of the light/dark technique or even exhibited as real objects simply painted by the artist showing that his art can be expressed even through sculpture, by means of three-dimensional products. The slow perception, the changeability of the visual process, the transforming features of Galeano’s art make us think of an issue man has always tried to understand and defeat: time. It is known that time can be intended as a linear dimension and in this chronological perspective it is made up of present, past and future; it can also be interpreted according to Agostino as a sort of eternal present or, following Bergson’s philosophy, it is seen as a subjective perception hence a single moment can be perceived as very long or even eternal while a long period can be experienced as a very short time. If we carefully observe Galeano’s works we are stimulated to think about time and its implications on man’s life even if no solutions are suggested since this is not what art aims at. There is another important element: Galeano’s “luminescent art” is also a sort of “shareable art” or “relational painting”. In the second half of the 20th century some artists who were particularly involved in the process of artistic innovation, introduced the idea that the observer had to “enter” the work of art. This has been put into practice in different ways: by means of a mirror through which the observer watches the work of art as in Michelangelo Pistoletto; by entering a setting appositively created by the artists as in the Exhibition Lo spazio dell’immagine which was held in Foligno in 1967 by artists such as Fontana, Castellani, Bonalumi, Ceroli and others; by turning a handle, pressing a switch, touching a display in order to activate the work of art. In this way the artistic work has its full and complete fulfilment only through the active participation of the audience. With Galeano something more complex happens: people are given a small lamp through which they can add or leave out some elements from the work of art, thus modifying it and choose whether to leave their signs or make them temporary, going back to the original product. It is evident that all this is only possible thanks to Galeano’s peculiar technique since if someone changed something on a traditional oil canvas it wouldn’t be possible to go so easily back to the previous product. Through this method Galeano motivates his audience to reach a complete understanding not only of the specific work but also of the whole process which is behind his production. To grasp the meaning and sensations of his works the visitors’ eyes and minds have to ideally reconstruct the entire working process helped by their practical interventions which lead them to a deeper knowledge and a more vital and emotional participation. Galeano is a great and authentic innovator that’s why he doesn’t want to eliminate everything belonging to the past; he just desires to go beyond the already known without annihilating12 it, experiment new things and assert the profound sense of “painting” and his will to be and be recognized as a “painter”. 1 Hesiod, Theogonia, v. 116, La teogonia di Esiodo e tre inni omerici, Einaudi editore, Torino 1981, p. 11.2 Vangelo secondo Giovanni, in I Vangeli, Einaudi editore, Torino 1973, p. 209.3 Pigments are made up of white powders but each of them has its own quality with a different color.4 About analytic painting also see Pittura 70. Pittura e astrazione analitica, Genova 2004. 5 Manuela Valentini, Il pittore della luce, an interview to the artist, in Raimondo Galeano, Opere luminescenti, 1970-2014, catalogue of the exhibition in Naples, Palazzo Reale e Castel dell’Ovo, 18 january-2 february 2014, pp.14 e 13. 6 Ibidem, p. 10. 7 A treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge (1710-1734). 8 Op. Cti., p.14. 9 H. von Hofmansthal, Il libro degli amici (1922), Adelphi edizioni, Milano 1980, p. 56. 10 Bibbia, Genesi, 1,3. 11 It must be highlighted that this exhibition is under the prestigious patronage of the Permanent Secretariat of Nobel Peace Laureates Summits due to the display of the “Nobel Peace Prize portraits” which were also exhibited at the Circa On Jellicoe gallery in Johannesburg and at the Everard Read Gallery in Cape Town in the years 2010- 2011. 12 According to the principle of the “overcoming” elaborated by Hegel in the fight between thesis and antithesis where the German word Aufheden meaning “overcome” contains the idea of “keeping and saving”.