“DYNAMIC DREAMS”
The art of chalcography by Giacomo Bacci
“ To send light into the darkness of men’ hearts. Such is the duty of the artist”
(Robert Schumann)
In the creative work of Giacomo Bacci, the chalcography activity takes up a remark place. An undoubtedly brave choice for an artist who starts to approach the art’s world: the chalcography, is, due to its nature, a tecnique that isn’t immediate at all, it requires a great knowledge of formal means and a patience in making unpredictable matter docile to creative action. To this is added the fact, far from negligible, that the evoctuous transformations of today’s society have led to a preference for very different types of expression, condemning the chalcography to a strange form of oblivion. Although this technique might not conduce to the consecration of the web’s people with their “likes” and “shares” (that have decreed the fortune of so much contemporary art played on the spectacularization or the exaltation of banality) that doesn’t matter to an artist like Giacomo Bacci who, although he is young, proves to have clear ideas. In fact, his disenchanted attitude towards reality and his nonconformist spirit lead him to see in the chalcography an autonomous expressive means, perfectly able to express and shape his own visual-imaginative world.
Giacomo Bacci is working in a print house of ancient tradition; here, side by side with important pressman masters, he had the opportunity to breathe the atmosphere of craftwork that united the workshops of the engravers of the Renaissance age and to follow the exciting transformation that leads a technical process to become artistic expression. Giacomo learns the mean rudiments to engrave the mold by his own hand, learns to follow it through the various methods of morsure, discovers the secrets for the printed graphic artwork to adhere to the creative image created. He understands how to manipolate the matter, he attacks the mold, he feels it giving up under the assault of his hand in a creative action that unites the engraver to the sculptor and takes possession of the medium and its possibilities of restoring the fullness, the forms and the light. That’s how the works of the serie “Dinamic Dreams” are born: a graphic production that is the result of a continuous and constant diligence, during which the artist of Piemontese origins tests technical procedures that are different every time, reaching outcomes that are extremely interesting both for technical skill that for poetic rendition. A touch sometimes light and sometimes deep, sometimes furious and sometimes delicate, marks the rhythm of a composition that, despite the repetitiveness of the subjects, leads to different results every time. The inexhaustible creativity of the engraver, together with the endless variety of technical means, create settings that are different every time, where lines or geometric solids convert the space into a kind of stage, while the skilful play of blacks and whites gives greater depth to the scene.
In surreal and dreamlike worlds of Giacomo Bacci, artistic ideas live in an eternal flow, floating in a time where the horizon of events seems to be only an illusion; a still time that keeps the observer in an atmosphere of suspension, in a contemplative silence.
The deafening silence of these unreal universes, however, is broken by the dynamic action of androgynous silhouettes isolated by a thin and harsh black line of contour.
In fact, the accent is not placed on the sense of waiting that reminds the static atmospheres of many metaphysical works; in the works of De Chirico the enigmatic nature of existence is simply ascertained without looking for solutions in squares with absolute immobility, with still figures waiting for someone or something. On the contrary, in the chalcography by Giacomo Bacci the atmosphere becomes less imminent and the immobility is broken by silhouettes that climb, jump, interact with each other, while an unexpected windblow moves the sails of a small boat or accompanies the passage of thin clouds in the distance.
Everything, including space, is actually an excuse for continous variations, to give life to incessant divertissement on the relationship between figure and action, according to a research spirit that reminds, in part, of the attitude of the italian painter and engraver Giorgio Morandi, who said:
“There is little or nothing new in the world. What matters is the new and different position in which an artist finds him self seeing and considering the things of so-called nature.”
Alternating, according to one’s expressive needs, a more controlled hatching and regular and tight line to a free and loose hatch, the artist creates nude figures with physical connotations that are barely connected and totally expressionless faces and makes them move, perform actions and gestures in a mental and unreal space that seems to rise to a sort of Greek gymnasium, a place where in ancient times, naked athletic exercises were practiced.
Facing the graphic work of Giacomo Bacci we should therefore linger for a long time: the time needed for understanding the subtle weft of the deep hatchings, the time needed for appreciating his ability in making the most of the possibilities of the graphic means to arrange different tonal zones intensity.
Even though the stylized human figure may be in some ways unripe, it does not matter when creative verve, ingenious stage compositions and considerable ability to modulate the fabric of the weft can be found in such a young artist and especially in such a complex art as chalchography.
In fact in this case we are not in front of a simple formal experimental research to test the possibilities of transposition of the graphic inspiration, in the art of chalchography there is all the originality of Giacomo Bacci, his control exercised on his work, the concentration of an artistic work expressed in the poetics of form and movement.
Virginia Bazzechi Ganucci Cancellieri
Historian and art critic
