credit: courtesy of the publishing house “Word”
“They just were meant – even if only once in my life – to leave an indelible mark in the history, anticipating fashion and trends to give your time more defined form and individuality,” describes the characters in his book “Talent without the fans. Outsiders in art” Accatino. The artist’s son, who grew up in his father’s workshop Enrico Accatino Alfredo knows exactly what the love of art – it is a heavy cross, and each piece is always inspired by life itself. His attempt to rescue the lost work has produced a bombshell in the author’s native Italy. Now this bestseller is available for the Russian reader by publishing the “Word”. Most of the works and photos from the book published in Russia for the first time.
Their future heroes – those who lived in Paris, Berlin and St. Petersburg in the 1920s and 1930s, the Bauhaus students and masters of “degenerate art”, exhibited on the eponymous exhibition organized by Hitler, Accatino found on the farthest walls of museums, which usually coexist with toilets and elevators, in catalogues purchased at the bazaars and auctions and little-known even among random Google image. And gradually little-known name in the signature took on flesh and blood, and there is a great artist and person with their passions, fears, illnesses, losses. “Outsiders always obviously a loser, recognize them at first sight. They are born, do, love, and die in the wrong place at the wrong time. Live as if in parallel worlds. And always to the wrong address,” writes Alfredo Accatino.
credit: courtesy of the publishing house “Word”
His imaginary Museum to those who did not get into the top 100, opens the flamboyant, eccentric, bright and incredibly talented Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven – artist, performer and poet. It is one of the fathers of the basicsusers of Dada and surrealism Marcel Duchamp wrote “the Baroness is not a futurist. She is the future”. Her life resembles a whirlwind of unexpected twists and turns. Born into a poor family, she as could, made their way upstairs, and having succeeded, once again pushed into the abyss. We can only guess how many lives she had lived for 53 years, but every time she anticipated the time. She shocked the audience with ornaments in the form of dummies, cages with Canaries and plastic rings from the curtains and the artists were inspired by their crazy ideas. By the way, the famous “Fountain” by Duchamp probably invented it.
After an eccentric Baroness, outfits which would have envied, Lady Gaga appears a Dutch painter and engraver, dick Ket, who lived in the first half of the twentieth century and famous for its still lifes and self-portraits, which show his “finger-sticks” – a consequence of the disease. He is survived by his 140 paintings and 40 of them are self-portraits. And this in itself is exactly what it says.
He dies a few days before his thirty – eighth birthday, brooding and melancholic, but never otchayalsya. And his paintings, thanks to daring technical experiments, and half a century later, remain as relevant as ever.
Future artist of Cagnaccio di San Pietrobono was a foregone conclusion, when in 1928 his painting “After the Orgy” was rejected by the jury of the Venice Biennale, headed by Margherita Sarfatti – art theorist, and part-time mistress and biographer of Benito Mussolini. “The artist and the anarchist, although he himself did not fully realize was a mad dog, Italian paintings of the 1930-ies. Always growling and not recognizing owners, like the cynic Diogenes”.
credit: courtesy of the publishing house “Word”
the Next room of an imaginary Museum dedicated to Amrita Sher-Gil – Indian Frida Kahlo and one of the most important artists of the XX century Asia. She has created a SeriYu paintings depicting women in the Indian villages, and the whole direction in painting. Amrita painted mountain women, paying tribute to their difficult lives and daily hard work. Experimenting with shapes and colors, mixed from the ground, pigments and spices, she painted women with a very alive expression. Her paintings convey emotions, feelings, and impulses, which has never happened before in Indian painting. Amrita died under strange circumstances a few days before the opening of the first large personal exhibition.
the elite of the talented outsiders also got a Russian immigrant, my whole life, “drawing the devil” Nicholas Kalmakov, Italian painter, miraculously balancing on the edge of madness, Jinnah Russia, nephew of Oscar Wilde, poet and intellectual, adored by the Dadaists and Surrealists Arthur Cravant, the artist-shaman Pavel Filonov, a victim of the Nazi program of killing people, unworthy to live, Elfriede Lohse-of Wachtler, the Lithuanian painter and musician Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, whose homeland is considered the founding father of modern painting and music and many others.
this Completes the encyclopedia of the unknown and underrated of modern art the story of a father author – Enrico Accatino despite the fact that he often appeared at the right time in the right place. “And I also ranked as the outsider, because he does not fit the other definitions. Because all his life he wanted to be an artist, and it is to be, and not just work. And do it as if tomorrow will never come. I knew then, but still understand…”.
credit: courtesy of the publishing house “Word”
But more importantly – if a little Alfredo in his hours sitting in his father’s workshop, preparing the cloth and rubbing the paint, he wouldn’t have become a detective of art, able to revive emotions with paint and fragments of visual culture of the twentieth century. “Dad instilled in me a love of fine artsubstance and given the privilege not to experience awe in front of anyone and nothing to like or dislike something without thinking about what will seem ignorant,” admits Accatino, Jr.
Vera Alfredo Accatino in the power of art is encouraging. And if someone of the artists-the heroes of this book entices the reader to take a fresh look at the world around us and discover new ideas and works, then “finally outsiders – forgotten, obviously the losers will be able to tell what won.”
