Vittorio Sgarbi - Gianfranco Paulli Sculptor

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Vittorio Sgarbi

 

Critical text Dr. Vittorio Sgarbi
About Master sculptor Gianfranco Paulli art work

Vittorio Umberto Antonio Maria Sgarbi (Ferrara, 8 may 1952) is an art critic, art historian, columnist, writer, television personality, and Italian politician. Former member of Parliament, of the 'city administration in Milan, undersecretary at the Ministry of Heritage and Cultural Activities.

From “Sgarbi's Opinion”


GIANFRANCO PAULLI is a sculptor who demonstrates extremely well-educated roots, which opportunely contrasts with the illusions of the contemporary avant-garde in order to look at the classicism, and a figuration typology that allows the translation of an extremely emotional expressivity into beauty. This sculptor from Cremona succeeds in moulding with his sensitive hands which have an indubitable artisan majesty, a throbbing world, which does not shirk the fascination of the fairy tale. Gianfranco Paulli can affront the clay in a sculpture, or think of a monumental designs to be realized in bronze, or apply himself, in the antique manner, to the statuary white marble of Carrara, succeeding always in bringing to the maximum result , with the strength of a revelation, the plastic potential of the sculptural material. His liberal way of controlling the human form, stresses the quality of a work where the ideal concept matches a precise requirement for perfection. This is the case of highly evocative and lyrical works, such as the "Inno alla Vita (Hymn to Life)" where a feminine figure in full relief caresses a baby, who opens its arms to the most natural gesture of a maternal love. Looking at the events of last century’s Italian sculpture and proceeding along the vital path of the figurative tradition, this sculptor transfers all of his emotional charge in emblematic portrayals that are incredibly attractive in their vitalistic charge.

His sculptures seem to act out the primary roles of the theatre of life, with an effective narrative and an incisive anti-rhetoric, which don’t go unnoticed even when it is exercised in monumental sizes or when it must respond to a buyer's requirements – and this is the case of the interesting homage to the instrument maker Stradivari. It’s about a sculptor who doesn’t allow himself to be seduced by experimental and overambitious research, he acts with extreme seriousness and consistency on absolutely truthful paradigms, where certainly portrait painting prevails, and where, at least in the thematic choices more congenial to his creative liberty, exalts the vision of a fresh, sensual and slightly languid feminine beauty. By the way, certain works of his emanate a realist energy which does not disdain even expressionistic grooves. However, this artist never sacrifices the classicism that is integral to his culture, and which bring his to scrutinize and interpret an idealized daily manner, without resigning to sudden aesthetics that could even have absorbed the lesson of Maestros such as Francesco Messina. Paulli’s repertoire focuses also on myth and religious allegory, and in this case is mentioned a disturbing Prometheus, forefather of an self-sacrificing suffering which is slightly opened, for analogy, to the beautiful portrayal of a risen Christ, but still profoundly hollowed of martyrdom in the lines of the face and the limbs. It is therefore equally dramatic and fascinating the portrayal of a bull of a bullfight, where the material mix is corrugated and even furious, in absolute contrast with the "Sogno sull’amaca (Dreaming on the Hammock)" where the feminine softness, which reminds you of a mention of Canova, has the motion of a musical adagio.

Every Paulli sculpture is therefore the exercise of a spettacolarita’ liberated from conformism of a self-referencing experimentation, and of the research of the meaning of the reality that accompanies the observer in the inhabitable territory of recognition.

Part of I giudizi di Scarbi,
Editorial Giorgio Mondadori,
Milano 2005
 
 
 
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