Articolo Alan Frenkiel

Dado
was born 100 years ago

Mostra retrospettiva
dal 30 dicembre al 6 gennaio

galleria-ristorante
via pasitea 236, positano
Tel 089 811 651

SUBJECTS ARE AN EXCUSE

Alan Frenkiel has lived in Positano for a long time. He now commutes between London and the Molise province of Italy, where he tries to build dry stonewalls and keeps constant watch over his shoulder.

I still see - or I imagine that I saw - Dado Predieri in front of his easel in one of the last and highest houses of the Chiesa Nuova in Positano. He sat with his back to the light streaming through the windows, that was reflected from the sea below. He looked toward the cave-like rear of his studio and stared at a cauliflower that he had placed on an old wooden stool in front of him. To one who had no possibility of transforming his vision, the cauliflower was just a vegetable that at most resembled an anatomic mass that lay just below our skull. But for Dado it was something else. It was, like for all creative people, an object that was to be transformed, metamorphosed, rendered poetic.

All that the true artist sees becomes a still life which, by his poetic intuition, is transformed and it begins to have a life of its own, so different to what it appears to be on first sight. Even Nature, the landscape has the same valence as a garland of garlic. All that is seen is reduced to the mysterious creative act, it is resurrected to an impalpable living entity. It becomes the visual poetry that enraptures and captures us, enveloping us into a state of wonderment.

And this is what Dado Predieri has done with all of his paintings: all is what it appears to be, but the appearance begins to resonate, echoing deep within us, transforming our way of feeling - and therefore our way of seeing.

And I still see - or so I imagine- Dado in his cavern-like studio, like those mysterious artists in the caves of Lascaux and Altamura reaching out to transform the surface above them into a vibrant image of what shall always be: the hidden melody of a poetic vision.

Alan Frenkiel

Cauliflower 50x65
(Private collection)