A slow vocation painter?

Written by Petra kerman

Is Fabrizio Ruggiero a slow vocation painter like Kandinsky, Mondrian, Dubuffet and Alberto Burri who reached the art of painting not in their youth or is he one with a long apprenticeship?

Fabrizio Ruggiero has been involved in art since his youth and yet it took time to find out his own expressive medium and he found it in a very old one, Fresco

The basic elements of fresco, sand, lime plaster and inorganic pigments offer him a good change to investigate the potentiality of expression of natural material substance.

The archaic taste of Fresco is an element of spell and irrational fascination as a spring, a motivating force for his inspiration.

Since the very beginning of his adventure, Fabrizio Ruggiero was interested in physical actions directed towards the materialization of the mind.

His starting point is the idea expressed, when he was just a child, by Asger Jorn of mind as “reflextion de la matière”, through which is possible to reach “la source vitale de l' ê tre” , where morality is “l'istinct de nos besoins ” and aesthetics “l'expression de nos desires sensoriels”.

The problem of material substance was born when painting stopped to be a representation of reality to become an independent one; manipulating the material substance, the artist establishes with it a relationship of existential continuity, of identification with it ; in material substance the artist fulfils his own reality as a human being.

Through Fresco, Fabrizio Ruggiero, observes that the material substance of painting is not only a tool, through which sensations are carried out, but a sensible one absorbing life and extension from sensations.

The material substance of painting is memory, a part that cuts off from us to exist by itself, thus it is very important to be aware of the energy conveyed by the very act of painting.

The range of his colors is characteristic of the land where is studio is located, The High Tiber Valley. A territory with a long tradition in fresco painting from Piero della Francesca, to Perugino and a strong attention to the material components of painting like in the contemporary informal paintings of Alberto Burri.

Looking at the thick, fragmented layers of colors in Fabrizio Ruggiero paintings, it looks like if the ghostly shapes of fantastic creatures, a mix of human, animal and vegetal beings, that had an in important part in the work of CoBrA artists, emerge purified from inner depth to new life in total dissolution.

Then the initial question whether is he a slow vocation painter or one with a long apprenticeship seems to loose interest since the material substance is melted, the “source vitale de l' ê tre “ caught up; the inner universe releases colors shaken by a silent, quiet pyrotechnical folly for the good of all sentient beings.

Petra Kerman is an art critic and curator based in Rome, London and New Delhi..  She is currently Contributing Editor for Contemporary Art magazines .

Rome, Oct.2006