WHERE THE ARTIST IS
Giannetto Valzelli

Between spring 1982 and winter 1992, Giuseppe Piovanelli seeds his “rational thoughts” for a self research in a notebook or concise and extrovert diary, according to Christian Wolff’s method, a German follower of the Enlightenment. He does it by means of “scientific” and “sensitive” knowledge. The outcome is a linked analysis of references to biology and psychology with a quick rhythm of deductions that clings on a combination of sylloge. At the end of this logic procedure the self awareness happens to come up, the Archimede’s own longing, which is finding the ubi consistam: the point of support is made real to move around, act and create.
By this exhibition from an apodeictical title “Dove sono” (Where I am), Piovanelli expresses and confirms the training process where the landing place, the essence and the state of grace are explained. The three stages that gave character, light and vigour to the journey to the inspiration and to the accomplishment of this kind of painting, which is unrelated to tradition but is nourished by a vital lymph, open to the urging and grafts of the avant-gardes flourishing which is ripen in the germ of the freshness of a distinctive sign.
Piovanelli the man is in love with his beautiful Camunia, he conceives it as the mother earth. He has to be set between the Tonale and Gavia’s snows from where the river Oglio, depicted as a patriarch with a fluent beard, flows down. He lives not far form the church of “Santa Maria del Romanino” who painted the Brescian Passion with Christ and the fishermen from Lake Sebino and the woodcutters from Grighaghe. Inside the valley stones engraved by his ancestors, he estimates the heritage of moral certainty; he feels the world religiousness flowing through his veins as principles of everything to narrate, as root of a joy of living.
Piovanelli the alpine lives his charming moments at the turning of days and seasons, in the feelings coming from the changing of the sky, in the peace exalted by the silence in the courtyard represented by inflaming colours on the palette, in the recollection of Amleto Romele who brought Piovanelli on the way of art by his friendship ardour and the devotion to his people.
Piovanelli the artist has grown up in the gift of feelings and the spur of culture and he has shaped his identity paying homage to the beauty and poetry suggested by his native landscape; he has transferred in sequence of “presences” the references to history and nature; he has drawn his inspiration from the harmonious coexistence of native people with the surrounding environment that renews and exalts. From that point, as a rest after the walking time and space, he glances at his works with self contemplation wishing to go ahead on the journey of his life.
Here this painting (on wood, canvas or paper, or in the oil mix or in the softness of pastel colours) is beaded in the fervour of quick, fine, minute touches from the starting brightness to the chromatic change of blue-green and red; it makes images rich in air, as in “Prima neve al sole” (First snow under the sun) and “Paesaggio e luce” (Landscape and light), it lyrically lays down to a view from the Vello shore to caress Montisola outline, the lake breast most loved by those born to paint.