LIGUSTRO: Marco Japanese magazine Reincarnation of Hokusai in Liguria (original) (raw)

1995, Marco Japanese magazine

LIGUSTRO: MARCO Japanese magazine Reincarnation of Hokusai in Liguria Ligustro dal suo amato Giappone, racchiuso nel piccolo studio di Imperia Oneglia, ha lasciato straordinarie idee da intuire e fantastiche opere da ammirare. Il mondo delle stampe giapponesi era indissolubilmente legato a due grandi personaggi ed amici che oggi non sono più con noi: JACK RONALD HILLIER (Londra 28, 8, 1912 - 5, 1, 1995) Giovanni Berio in arte LIGUSTRO (Imperia 1, 1, 1924 - 11, 12, 2015) I famigliari scrissero per gli amici di Jack R. Hillier : Amato da molti. Una vita lunga, felice, preziosa (Loved by very many. A long happy, valuable life) In diverse occasioni Ligustro, con le sue stampe, i surimono, gli e-goyomi, i mitate, gli ex libris, gli haiku e con il kaimei (cambio di nome) ha contribuito a rafforzare i legami tra Italia e Giappone. In tutte le preziose opere, si possono notare i principali temi della produzione artistica del Maestro Ligustro quali la profondità, la luce, la bellezza femminile, la vita, la felicità, l'amicizia, la famiglia e la sua armonia, l'educazione, la cultura, la natura ed un mondo migliore. Ligustro in several occasions has helped to strengthen the relationships between Italy and Japan thanks to his prints, surimono, e-goyomi, mitate, ex libris, haiku and the kaimei (change of name). In all his precious artworks, we can observe the main themes of his artistic production such as the depth, light, female beauty, life, happiness, friendship, family, harmony, politeness, culture, nature and a better world. XYLOGRAPHY, AN ANCIENT ART Xylography, like sculpture, can be considered a “timeless art”, unlike painting, which is always linked to the epoch, the culture and the place in which is sprouts. Paradoxically, xylography – ......... It is also true that xylography, in its multiform history – from the first Gothic woodcuts to the Large Passion and the Small Passion by Albrecht They go by the name of “chiaroscuro” prints and were done by artists like the celebrated Siena painter Domenico Beccafumi or the less well-known Antonio da Trento. In the modern epoch xylography has been widely used, both in Europe and in the Far East, in the illustration of religious and non-religious texts: among the oldest ones in china we can mention the polychrome ones of the book Shih Ch’iu Chai Chu hua p’u (I use the old system of transliteration because this is how it is given in the western bibliography) and those of the well-known painting manual Chieh Tzu Yuan .. The woodprint technique arrived in Japan from China, but, as all scholars agree, it was in Japan, starting from the Tokugawa ......... UKIYO-E AND MODERN ART If I have dwelt at some length on the history of the origins of xylography, it is because I wanted to remind the reader that this technique, in which Ligustro can be considered one of the greatest living artists, came from distant places and was closely linked to the spread of images through printing; in sum, it is noble descent, even though it is not one a millenary on as that of its elder sister painting. .. in Edo and Osaka. Hence there was a culture that in its own way was a bourgeois on, unlike the previous aristocratic one at the imperial court in Kyoto and that found at the places of residence of the feudal seigniors in the various regions. In .......... In this connection, it is widely known that the figures of bijin (images of beautiful women) by Kitagawa Utamaro and Hosoda Eishi influenced an artist like Toulouse-Lautrec in his posters showing the actresses Jane Avril and May Belfort, and that “views” by Ando Hiroshige were decisive in Van Gogh’s development … ..From what he has told me, he began to engrave on “head” wood in the old western manner in 1983, at a ripe age. Previously, at the start of 1980’s, he had done a series of pastels with chalk crayons and aquarelles, views of Liguria landscapes and still lifes with sea in the background denoting considerable skill and a marked creative character. If of one re-examines them today, they look like works that, in the fullness of the light, show a certain link with the “luminism” of divisionist Ligurian painting at the start of then twentieth century: they call to mind certain coastal landscapes by Rubaldo Merello. And in this way he was already breaking away from the western tradition, which conceives drawing as a “descriptive” method of analysis of reality, through successive phases from the “sketch” to the “finished work”. ..what Ligustro must have set out to do. LIGUSTRO’S TECHNIQUE The artist’s first attempts at woodcuts date from 1985: a view of roof’s at Oneglia, with a flower in the foreground and the big circle of the sun in the background; a boat with a sailor at the rudder on a curved sea, and once again the star setting with its trail reflected on the water. ... But from these first, stringent and almost skeletal attempts to the right “brocade” (nishiki-e) prints of the 1990s the distance was but a short one. Ligustro, like all self-taught geniuses, was to borrow the elements of Japanese printing and elaborate them in a personal technique of his own; thus he was to produce his own instruments in order to achieve the desired effects: the baren, or dabber disc to press the sheet on the wooden matrix, made of cork and not rope and having variable diameter; the kento, or marginal register on the matrixes,..... ……. Like Sole nella rete [Sun in the net], 1998, Palloncini [Balloons], 1998, Varco nel cielo [Beach in the sky], 1999, La danza del sole [The sun’s dance] and Malinconica attesa [Melancholy wait], 2000, these are powerful examples of how xylography, in this age of conceptual and computerised art, continues to thrive; of how much imagination and man’s patient hand can put into expression of the figures in the world. Lastly, there is the print that I prefer, Geisha alla finestra con veduta di Oneglia [Geisha at the window with view of Oneglia], 1998. I deem it one of the little xylography masterpieces of the twentieth century. …. .....Jacoulet, and to twentieth-century Japanese artists like Yamamoto Shoun (1870 – 1942), with the typical floral frames sound female portraits, or Kawase Hasui (1883 – 1957), when he draws flowers, as in Iris, 1929, and not landscapes, and lastly Yamamura Koka (1885 – 1942), all artists who elaborated the Ukiyo-e tradition in a modern key. Thus I reflect that the great art of drawing has never been wedded to manual toil, the hewing of the sculptor, in the same way as in xylography. ...... Hillier, who before being a scholar was a passionate woodcutter, was fully aware that the history of engraving is renewed in every epoch and produces its purest fruits outside all convetion. Marco Fagioli ..Prof. Marco Fagioli ..........................tedesco da WASMUT, Berlino 1998. Recentemente ha pubblicato nelle edizioni AIO’N il catalogo monografico su Elisabeth Chaplin, Tra simbolismo e neo-spiritualismo, Firenze, 2001, e il saggio Momenti della pittura cinese, Dalle origini alla dinastia Yuan, Firenze, 2001. Jack Hillier’s letter Berio Ligustro seemed destined to become a print-maker, and especially a colour-woodblock print-maker. In convalescence in 1972, after a heart attack, he began to take an interest in oil painting, but found no inspiration in that medium nor in pastel which he came to later. But pastel did lead him to a study of a variety of papers. It was, as much as anything, the amazing qualities of Japanese paper that led him to Japanese graphics, and quite suddenly, he found that not only was he drawn to experiment in cutting woodblocks for prints in the “Nishiki-e” style (the colourful “brocade” manner) but that he had an unexpected flair for handling this intricate oriental technique. Having found a medium that allowed him to express himself, he taught himself the laborious processes of print production. There have been numbers of western artists who have attempted to make woodblocks colour-prints – Henry Rivière and John Platt for instance – but none has approached Ligustro’s mastery of the complexities of cutting and printing techniques. Amazingly, Berio Ligustro has followed the Japanese not only in colour woodblock techniques, but in creating prints that have symbolism and incorporate poetry, Japanese calligraphy and an imaginative use of images, with lavish use of Hand-carved seals that may simply give “artist names” or even some pictorial elements expressing good wishes for longevity or the like. But certainly, the most astonishing of the artist’s gifts is his surpassing ability in cutting the blocks and achieving printing effects rivalling the virtuosity of the Japanese craftsmen. No colour reproduction can do justice to the original, either in the brilliance of the metallic gold and silver overlays or the blind printing that is used for embossing. The square Surimono of “Fireflies and a crescent moon” gives some ideas of the intricacies of gold and silver veining and the gradation of the colour in the sky, from dark indigo to magical lilac serving as a background to the fireflies, each with its silver halo. Another Surimono shows a spider in a golden web of exquisite fragility, spun between poppies in a field and a scarecrow. ……. In a series of prints dedicated to the “Twelve Months”, February bears an inset scene of a group of colourful anemones that light up a snowy was.......................... in oriental art to Sotheby’s, is the author of numerous books on Japanese prints and paintings. Among his most recent ............................................ Fukuda Kazuhiko’s letter One day early in 1991, as if I was opening a little, mysterious bamboo container, I opened the door of Ligustro’s workshop in the port town, close to the border with France. ..... Ligustro’s prints create an artistic world where the muse plays the harp. Look at their immediate grace; I will not be alone in becoming drunk on this pure beauty. ..