(Crossing between images and words in the colours of time )

Biography:

 

Alessandro Monticelli (1973) Born in Sulmona (AQ) has published poetry collections with Mauro Baroni Publisher (Viareggio) 2004 “Expired Medicine”; Culture Project Publisher (Rome) 2004 “Made in Italy”; Il Foglio (Piombino) 2006 -2nd edition 2007 “Tales from a madhouse”; His works are published in various literary journals (Ellin Sela, Prospektiva, Il Segnale, Tratti, etc.).. Starting from 1999, he begins his multifaceted artistic activity and exhibits his pictures in galleries and museums of many important Italian cities.

 


 

Critical comment :

The crossing between the words and the colors has always worried me. What is the filament that underlies the artist? The expressive power of the line or the material background painting on the canvas? The art history is steeped in surprising interpretations where the fugacity of the vision replaces the image and image the word, the rhythmic that, again, becomes light and matter crushed on the canvas, on the chalk, in the bronze or in the socket of the marble.
If I think of Van Gogh, Gauguin, Montale, Soffici  or Savino (only to extrapolate some biographical) I wonder if the literary profile is genesis or development, research or consequence. The pages of the diary by Van Gogh, Gauguin’s memoirs, the poems by Soffici, quiver as their canvases quiver, are pure literary watermark; they emerge from the same light, the same mixed colors on their palettes in a creative process not revealed but urgent and defined
Well, when I read the poems of Alexander Monticelli, I immediately thought of a thematic placing such as this, I read his poetry without even knowing he was also a painter, however, the scansion of the line, the rapidity with which succeeds to capture the image, the smells he perceives, the strong materiality of the metric urgency, lead unambiguously to a plastic tension, referring to the memory when it finds expression and life on  canvas .
 His words, his images scratch the paper as strokes of acrylic mixture, are dense, acres, sometimes they open themselves in spaces by wide painting of the background, and they have abundance and dignity, they measure the cadence of live, of meeting, to find again without  precise location in the whirl of existence. Not surprisingly, one of the most beautiful poems of the compilation we present on dictamundi is dedicated to Mark Rohtko, to an art of immensity with colors mainly warm (red, yellow, brown ) but where transpire shadows and lacerations from which filter anguish and  unmerciful search.
Sometimes on the paper are engraved glimpse of ungarettiana memory (or cuts of Lucio Fontana?), often lyric flows from looking the graffiti of the time, the metropolitan areas, the smell of latrines and of underground pocking around the pathways of life, waiting for fleeting meetings that wrap, as tissue paper, the signs of memory.
For a complete observation of pictorial art of Monticelli see a visit on his personal website WWW.ALESSANDROMONTICELLI.IT

(Comment by Pier Luigi Coda)

THE POEMS

Stazione (interno bagni)

Lo colse l’odore acre di sperma e intenso di urina
dei bagni della stazione.
Sui muri numeri telefonici che promettono
Di esaudire ogni più intima e perversa richiesta.
Persone che si offrono come bestie da immolare
Sull’altare del sesso a pagamento.
Nella memoria ritornano i volti delle donne con cui è stato
Volti trasfigurati, pietrificati, sanguinanti.
E i loro nomi che come insegne al neon di motel malandati
Lampeggiano tristemente o s’illuminano a metà.
Si sedette ad aspettarla, lei come sempre puntualissima
Nei suoi ritardi.
La sera togliendole delicatamente le mutandine si sincerò
Del fatto che i suoi capelli biondi fossero naturali.
Intanto un nuovo giorno iniziava
Impossibile fermarlo.
Railway Station (inside bathrooms): The acrid smell of semen and intense of urine/ of the toilets in the station caught him./ On the walls phone numbers promise to fulfill/ every intimate and perverse request./ Persons who offer themselves like beasts to immolate/ on the altar of the sex to payment./The faces of the women with which he has been go back in the memory./
Faces transfigured, petrified, bleeding./ And their names as neon signs of dilapidated motel/ flash sadly  or light up half./ He sat down waiting for her,/ she as always on time/ in her delays./ The evening taking  off gently her panties he makes sure/ that her blond hair was natural./ Meanwhile, a new day began / Impossible stop it.

Ti sei allontananta

Ti sei allontanata con dovizia di particolari
E il passato puntuale e noioso
Ora mi incalza in forma di ricordo, rimpianto
di rimorso.
Ma la mia vera malinconia e’ quella del futuro.
Il suono di quella nota tenuta a lungo sulle labbra
E che poco prima dell’applauso si spezza.
You have moved away in great detail/ And the past punctual and tedious/ Now pursues me in the form of memory, regret/ of remorse./ But my real melancholy is that about the future./ The sound of that long-held note on the lips/ And that just before the applause breaks.

Estate


Si sciolgono le intenzioni
 Come il ghiaccio nei bicchieri.
Summer: Intentions melt/ As the ice in glasses.

Sul sagrato delle promesse mai mantenute

Sul sagrato delle promesse mai mantenute
Le parole sono  a terra come chiodi arrugginiti
E ad usarle sanguina la bocca.
L’unica cosa che il dolore un po’ lenisce
E che quello che non sai non ti ferisce.

Come splendore inutile di valuta fuori corso
Anche oggi la croce proietta la sua ombra
Sulla bellezza che passa di letto in letto
Ansante di carnalità tellurica
E franante nel giardino dei supplizi d’amore.

Dietro le spalle il giorno appassisce
Come latrato di cane che in lontananza
S’indebolisce.

Leggo di Rothko che nel 1970 a 67 anni
Si suicida nel suo studio tra un blu e grigio
Un arancio e viola, rosso marrone  e nero.

 E forse anche oggi soprappensiero
A chi ho parlato ho detto verità più del previsto.
On the churchyard of promises never kept/ Words are on ground as rusty nails/ And to use them the mouth bleeds./ The only thing that pain soothes a little/And what you do not know doesn’t hurt you./ How useless splendor of currency out circulation/ Also today the cross projects its shadow/ On the passing beauty from bed to bed/ Painting of telluric carnality/ And sliding down in the garden of the torments of love./ Behind my back the day withers/ As of dog barking that in the distance/ Weakens./ I read Rothko in 1970 at the age of 67 /commits suicide in his studio between a blue and gray/ An orange and purple, red, brown and black./ And maybe even today lost in thought/ To whom I spoke I said the truth more than expected.

Forse una festa

Quel bambino rigava tutta l’acqua con le dita
Una ferita al rallentatore.
Seduto, leggevo “Poesia” per sapere cosa scrivono
Oggi i poeti in Libia o in Costa Rica.
Poi i bicchieri da cocktail infranti
Bellissimi capelli biondi
E le tue parole
La suoneria di un telefono in una casa vuota.
Io così sentimentale da risultare cattivo
Mi mettevo a letto e giravo le spalle a tutto.
Perhaps a celebration: That child rules  the water with his fingers/ A wound in slow motion./ Sit, I read “Poetry” to know what poets write/ Today in Libya or in Costa Rica./ Then the cocktail glasses broken/ Beautiful blond hair/ And your words/ The ringing of a phone in an empty house./ I so sentimental as to be bad/ I went to bed and turned my back on everything.
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