The Nineteen nineties
The history of monochromatic painting in western modern art is long and complex. In revolutionary Russia we can identify the theoretical and practical sources of the two main trends in the history of the monochrome. If Malevich's (1918) white square on white canvas is the source of the more spiritual trend, Rodchenko's triptych, pure red, pure yellow, pure blue (1921) starts a materialistic reflection about paintings as objects and works of art as consumer goods. Of course, a radical distinction between spiritual and materialistic monochromes would be simplistic and historically reductive because these categories had already come under attack during the neo-avantgardes period of the nineteen fifties and sixties ( for example with artists such as Lucio Fontana and Yves Klein) and because monochromatic painting was exploited both as a reflection upon the cultural, social and economic status of the work of art as a tangible and ownable object and also as the ultimate instrument of the sacredness of art and of the sublimation of its tangible physicalness. Much as Profumo’s work is certainly to be counted among Malevich's descendants (from Rothko to Kapoor) rather than Rodchenko's, the dialectic dimension prevails again.
The works he exhibited in 1991 in Turin at the gallery “L'Uovo di Struzzo”consist of small and middle-sized canvases (never over one and a half metres) where the background is rent by a central gash of light or darkness. Everything happens on the surface: the monochromatic, glossy paint consists of a shower of small spatula strokes that make the surface vibrate. The painting declares itself as an object and displays the tools and gestures of its creation but, at the same time, it is the visible limit of another space, shining and boundless. The interplay is between the illusory light ― depicted in the central gash using the traditional chiaroscuro technique ― and the real light which varies constantly with the movements of the observer and with the changing light outside.
I was impressed to learn how the photographer, Dragonetti, had taken the photos of these paintings in almost total darkness, with very long exposure times, so as to better reproduce the luminous motility of these painted surfaces. It's a technical device that well coincides with Profumo's lesson: painting is not only a way of displaying the artist’s vision but is also a suggestion as to how the observer should look at it. The artist compels observers to use their eyes both to see and to touch and to linger in their perusal. There is nothing to recognize, measure or number: seeing becomes purely qualitative.
After this first prolific phase, there follows a second which characterizes the artist's last research, where the glossy colours are replaced by softer oil paints which absorb the eye. Spatula strokes are now followed by rich brush strokes that fill up geometrical shapes not very far removed from those that made up his works of the early Sixties. The eye no longer glances off a reflective surface, but slides, captivated, along the paths marked by the bristles of the brush (remindful of Morandi). It is as if the light that formerly shone from below in his earlier works finally reveals itself in all its splendour, brilliant and profound.
The works he exhibited in 1991 in Turin at the gallery “L'Uovo di Struzzo”consist of small and middle-sized canvases (never over one and a half metres) where the background is rent by a central gash of light or darkness. Everything happens on the surface: the monochromatic, glossy paint consists of a shower of small spatula strokes that make the surface vibrate. The painting declares itself as an object and displays the tools and gestures of its creation but, at the same time, it is the visible limit of another space, shining and boundless. The interplay is between the illusory light ― depicted in the central gash using the traditional chiaroscuro technique ― and the real light which varies constantly with the movements of the observer and with the changing light outside.
I was impressed to learn how the photographer, Dragonetti, had taken the photos of these paintings in almost total darkness, with very long exposure times, so as to better reproduce the luminous motility of these painted surfaces. It's a technical device that well coincides with Profumo's lesson: painting is not only a way of displaying the artist’s vision but is also a suggestion as to how the observer should look at it. The artist compels observers to use their eyes both to see and to touch and to linger in their perusal. There is nothing to recognize, measure or number: seeing becomes purely qualitative.
After this first prolific phase, there follows a second which characterizes the artist's last research, where the glossy colours are replaced by softer oil paints which absorb the eye. Spatula strokes are now followed by rich brush strokes that fill up geometrical shapes not very far removed from those that made up his works of the early Sixties. The eye no longer glances off a reflective surface, but slides, captivated, along the paths marked by the bristles of the brush (remindful of Morandi). It is as if the light that formerly shone from below in his earlier works finally reveals itself in all its splendour, brilliant and profound.
