PREFACE of Giuseppe Martucciello
“About Maestro Guido Profumo…”
It is with sincere pleasure that I have accepted Guido’s invitation to write a brief introduction to his new catalogue “In Search of the Essential”, which contains every moment of reflection on the creation of art today.
The collection is also a tribute to the memory of his Brother, and therefore an extremely heartfelt initiative.
In this brief introduction I would like to include a few of the “Interpretative Notes to the Manifesto” that Guido Profumo published on April 15th, 2020 on his website iaover.org and on the dust cover of the catalogue.
Guido Profumo interprets his concept of Art in a “Manifesto” that is freely shared in the spheres of social media, business and economics.
The importance of the document regards the artist’s radical choice to interpret art that is not elitist or detached from the reality of the social context we live in. The journey Guido takes us on is twofold, leading us, on one hand, in pursuit of the pleasure of making art which is “constantly interwoven with matter and reality” and, on the other, in a conscious search for a lifestyle and economic construct that are more real than that which we have so far lived in the new millennium.
The theme of the relationship between Art and Society and Art and Economy is not entirely new, since all true artists are inevitably the product of their era and their socio-economic context. What is different about Guido and his work is the full awareness of this primary and essential relationship. Personally, I have found that the only artist whose work comes anywhere near is Alberto Burri (1915-1995), because in the first post-War production the relationship between Artist/Materials and Economic-Social Reality is one whole. His most famous series, dating back to the first half of the 1950s, was that of the ‘sacks’. On evenly dyed red or black canvases he glued jute sacks. These sacks all had a ‘poor’ appearance, worn, repaired and restitched, like post-War Italy that had to be rebuilt. These works initially caused considerable scandal, but their expressive force, in line with the cultural climate of the day dominated by existentialist pessimism, quickly made them ‘classics’ of art. “His work has radically called into question the concept of art and its relationship with life. Art as mimetic make-believe that imitates life now appears to have been permanently surpassed by art that illustrates life with the sincerity of life itself.”
Another unbreakable link with the socio-economic experience is represented by Neurath, who defined the 20th Century as “the era of the eye”. Knowledge of the world is gained by visual stimulation, mainly during leisure hours, for example through cinema and television. For this reason, in order to educate the poorer classes, he considered it necessary to make extensive use of images instead of words. To this end, Neurath invented visual statistics that are easy to read and interpret (diagrams, illustrations, photographs, icons, drawings, etc.). With the help of the modernist painter and illustrator Gerd Arntz he developed a unique series of graphic symbols called Isotype (acronym for International System of Typographic Picture Education, 1935) which, by privileging the use of logistically simple images, illustrates meanings in a way that is clear and immediately recognisable.
In the case of Guido Profumo, however, a turning-point was inevitable, since in these changing times the relationship with Economy and Society is completely in contrast with a simple symbiotic bond. The relationship seems to be more effectively represented by magnetic poles that repel and/or attract each other, which the artist masterfully tackles in keeping with his lifestyle and creative work. If he were not able to do this, the principles of economic globalisation and lifestyle would tend to reject the ‘simple’ material artistic process.
Ever the nonconformist, for Guido art remains closely connected with life, as if the economy were always and exclusively bound to the material product. These two spheres are distant only in appearance; they are, in fact, closely related as long as Art remains a search for contemporary expressive material and the economy embraces the principle of being related to the product. Art is food for the mind; the product is food for the body or for survival.
An arrangement that leaves quite an impression!
Giuseppe Martucciello