Salvatore Sava on show in Lecce: the other sculpture
Arturo Martini, one of the greatest sculptors of our twentieth century, wrote in 1945 that “by now sculpture is absurd if we compare it with life”, as it is “incapable of unfolding in the daily movements”, so nothing would justify its survival in the modern world. Yet since then the research and proposals of sculpture, also thanks to new materials made available by technologyhave spread out into a thousand perspectives, often of the most varied value, passing by from the superficial pop art of the very expensive Jeff Koons to the most intricate emotional folds of the new acclaimed talent Jago.
Or, as the scholar writes Paolo Bolpagni“From an esoteric subjectivism leading to self-denial, aphasia” to an “empty virtuosity, or rather in mere satisfaction with the alleged aesthetic value of matter in itself, even regardless of its transfiguration into shape”.
One mare magnum where it is not difficult to lose the route, both for those who want to present their own intrinsic expressive need, both for those who propose to look for a way to interpret and present it. But after all, the complexity of the contemporary universe and its elusiveness belong to all sectors of human knowledge, it would be unthinkable that art, precisely because it is often “absurd” or “not deaf” according to the Latin etymology, it was not an expression, when not anticipation.
13. Salvatore Sava, Fiore del Salento, 2019, cement, Lecce stone, galvanized iron and enamel, diameter 52 cm
The sculptor from Salento Salvatore Sava, teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lecce, for years one of the most appreciated Italian sculptors, has always had in mind the need to plow through these turbulent waters following a route that made the choice, to use Martini’s words, “capable of take place in the daily movements “. And he did it by looking for them more unusual combinations of materials, creating contrasts and fusions together, but without aiming either at an assemblage of poor art or at the pindaric flights of the avant-gardes. Sava always seeks, Bolpagni continues, “di bring the sculpture back to lifeto make it sensitive and communicative, to make it speak to the heart and mind of today’s man, interpreting his anxieties, disturbances, ambiguities ”.
It fully demonstrates this his latest exhibitiontitled The other one sculpture, that moves within the Biscozzi / Rimbaud Foundation of its agile and harmonious city with the masters of the 20th century present in the permanent collection of the institution open to the public just a year ago. About thirty works that draw well the expressive parable, linked to his land and at the same time devoted to an inner universality, full of an exhibited passion for minerals and vegetables, of an underground but clear fury against the rapists of our planet, of a delicate attention to the minimal vital forms of nature.
Always working with a mix of metals, plastics, stones, resins, enamels, Sava offers us its Stone flowershis Wind trapthe unpublished collage metallic on black cardboard, The 15 letters of copper silverextraordinary and never seen before, the delicious The tree of the moonup to the paradigmatic Flower of Salentoalong a very interesting path full of meanings, in which every visitor can get lost, enlightened, be pleased, in that direct confrontation with the works that is always an attempt to assimilate them to their own feelings and mood of the moment.
Obviously smiling at the memory of the words of the American abstract painter Barnett Newman, a leading exponent of color field paintingwho affirmed: «sculpture is what one collides with when one steps back to look at a painting from more distant».
3a. Salvatore Sava, The tree of the moon, 1997, iron and stone, 113 x 115 x 78 cm (1)
Salvatore Sava. The other sculpture
Biscozzi / Rimbaud Foundation – piazzetta Baglivi 4, Lecce
until 25 September
opening hours: every day, except Mondays, 16/19; Sunday also 10/13
tickets (including a visit to the permanent exhibition): € 5; € 3 euro for groups of more than 15, under 18, school groups, students of universities, art academies and conservatories, teachers; free for children up to 6 years, disabled (and companion), group leaders, ICOM members, military and law enforcement, tourist guides, journalists
5. Salvatore Sava, The flowers of Colle di Aurio. The Trap, 1999