Interview

Night Art from Naples

The Neapolitan painter Giancarlo Savino is exhibiting at Stalke Gallery in Copenhagen.
"I paint for emotions, not for the eye," he says.

NAPLES – Copenhagen and Naples. Two cultural and geographical extremes in Europe meet as the Copenhagen gallery Stalke in Copenhagen opened an exhibition yesterday of oil, watercolor, and graphic works by the Neapolitan painter Giancarlo Savino.

On his fifth visit to Denmark, he brings with him the fruits of the last few years of solitude in the chaotic southern Italian city.

We find Giancarlo Savino five minutes from his residence in Naples’ old district, right where the modest street Via Santa Chiara crosses the bustling and noisy Via Benedetto Croce. He is standing leaning on a police barrier that, for the first time in Naples' history, prevents the city center's chaotic traffic from flowing into the city's bustling heart. As long as the new mayor keeps passing by, police officers can linger, patrolling their assigned posts, looking as moved and lost as a poet staring into space.

Giancarlo Savino listens and observes in quiet awareness, and at night he lets the colors flow onto canvas and paper in his fourth-floor studio.

He works alone in a hermitic atmosphere, comforted by the hum of millions of people sleeping, interrupted only by the rare echo of distant footsteps or the sound of waves breaking near a window.

"I try to grasp and preserve basic human emotions and express them with the loneliness and silence of a world around me. A world that is disordered by remote control and superficiality. I want to show the way back to the basics of existence. If you really want something out of my works, it is necessary to shut out modern noise and replace it with a sense of spirituality. I paint for emotions, not for the eye," says Giancarlo Savino.

Although strongly influenced by French and European post-impressionists, the painter's roots are still an indispensable source of inspiration.

"At other cities in Europe, I have never needed as much material for my works as I find here in Naples," he adds.

Even though he is greatly influenced by Northern European Impressionism, his hometown by the bay is indispensable as a source of inspiration.
in no other cities in Europe do I have the necessary human material for my Pictures like in Naples
Here, it’s enough to move five meters down the street because Naples will never become a homogeneous city; it refuses to change," says Giancarlo Savino, who is a frequent and recognized guest in Rome, Paris, Bern, Frankfurt, and Copenhagen but has only exhibited once in his 47-year life in Naples.

A Visit from Space

The promising young Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi has described one of Savino's creative Neapolitan nights in a story, "The Painter and His Creatures," which will be published in the fall as part of a book featuring Savino’s paintings. The book is presented in conjunction with an exhibition in Copenhagen, unfortunately only in Italian. Here is an unauthorized translation of Tabucchi's encounter with Savino’s universe:

"The painter has prepared a meal for his creations. On the table, he has placed bottles of white wine and some glasses. He does not know which creations will appear tonight, as they must still be summoned. The painter takes his sheets of paper and places them on the table as if they were napkins. Then he takes his watercolors and pours them into small jars, which he arranges by each sheet as if they were part of an exotic or magical dish. The painter lights a candle under a lampshade, drinks a glass of wine, and toasts his upcoming guests.

The first visitor arrives encapsulated in a kind of transparent egg, like a fetus from another planet. The creature has traveled many light-years to reach this warm Mediterranean city, where the lights shimmer in the crescent-shaped bay. It is bald with two pitch-black eyes, looking inquisitively at the painter and the empty kitchen. It does not know our language, but the painter has learned its.

'Once, I was a human being like you,' the creature says. 'I lived in this city, in this house, but so long ago that you wouldn’t remember. I left this world, as humans do, and reached other worlds far from here. For a long time, I lived in an ice block, unable to feel anything, until you awakened me and brought me here.'"

And so, in Tabucchi's tale, Giancarlo Savino sets out to paint his creature, freeing it from its curse. When the first church bells ring, he goes to bed "to move from one dream to another."

Meeting with Denmark

Savino made his first trip to Denmark in the mid-1980s at the suggestion of a Danish friend who wanted to see his paintings in a Copenhagen setting. After his debut in 1986 at Galleri Jedich, he was among the invited exhibitors at Charlottenborg in 1987. This was followed by two exhibitions, the latest in 1990 with the now-dissolved Neapolitan "Virus" group.

"Copenhagen is different from other Northern European cities. It is filled with contradictions, somewhat naïve perhaps, but at the same time alive and full of strong young artists who receive a lot of attention."

Five years ago, he succeeded in establishing an exchange program between Danish and Neapolitan artists. From the north came sculptor Michael Rasmussen and painters Søren Ankarfeldt, Lars Burchardt, Pia Johansen, and Jeanette Fyhr. Heading north, a group of Neapolitans returned home with long summer nights shining in their eyes.

This time, only one Neapolitan travels, and Giancarlo Savino is ready to meet the Nordic autumn, well-prepared after endless nights in the shadow of Vesuvius, where he has sprinkled his cursed creatures with wine and helped them emerge from the ice block onto canvas and paper. Yet another dream journey begins, and even though Savino denies it, perhaps there is an iceberg floating over Øresund tonight that will be released in a way other than by the cooling waters of Barsebäck.

By Lisbeth Davidsen and Morten Beiter

Berlingske tidende 24.9.1994