Val Borbera: foreshortening
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All the Valley, in particular the High Val Borbera, is one earth of dialect, culture, and traditions from Liguria; here, for centuries the great Genoese Families of the Doria, of the Fieschi, of the Spinola dominated the Valley until when the whims of the History included it in thePiedmontese region and assigned it to the jurisdiction of the Province of Alessandria.
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In this angle of geography that has still maintained its landscaped beauty intact, I spent the first years of infancy. Here I have learned to love and to respect the nature, Here I discovered the spell of a snowy landscape and the pain of the she-cat when its little cats are killed; I discovered also the agony of the viper knocked by strokes of stone
I lived there a moment, a chip of life then my parents moved in Liguria, exactly at Cervo Ligure where I have attended the elementary schools.
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Mario Fabbrini: Landscape in Val Borbera - oil on canvans |
Mario Fabbrini: Village in Val Borbera - Oil on ply-wood
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Mario Fabbrini: The little chapel - Oil on wood
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THE TIME OF ELEMENTARY SCOOLS
At Cervo Ligure I lived in the locality named “Porteghetto”, near of the sea, solo the Aurelia road separated my house from the reef on which the waves smashed when the winds of libeccio and scirocco raised. I don’t remember the faces of my infancy friends; but I remember the names: Gianni, Riccardo, Lino, Pippo, Franco, Gian Paolo. We played on the terraced bands of olive trees and between gorges of reefs where the moray hides.
On thursday I waited with eagerness the arrival of the coach of 2 p.m. from Imperia, my father bought “Pecos Bill” illustrated by Guido Martina, Raffaele Papparella, Pier Lorenzo De Vita and Francesco Gamba. A jewel of comic in which the graphical art was melted with the novellistic rhythm of the adventures. There were unforgettable protagonists: the horse named Turbine, Davy Crockett, Calamity Jane so jelous of the Little Sue. For me it was a feast, but I had to take it quickly, otherwise my sister took it away from my hands.
THE ADOLESCENCE
In the 1955’s my parents moved to the chief town of province, to Imperia, the city of Edmondo De Amicis, Boine, and Angiolo Silvio Novaro; here I attend the medium schools “Fratelli Serra” and, subsequently, I achieved the high school diploma at the Scientific Lyceum. |
Mario Fabbrini: Seaside at Imperia - Oil on ply-wood
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Mario Fabbrini:The saracen tower - Oil on ply-wood |
Mario Fabbrini: Sails at Imperia - Oil on ply-wood |
In Imperia I meet personages who will record deeply in my formation: above all, two: the prof. Dario Dedoni, dean of the Nautical Institute and teaching of letters, and the prof. Attilio Scaramuzza, teaching of Italian literature to the Scientific Lyceum; both appreciate my propensity to letters and both whish address me towards humanistic faculty.
I meet also the poet of Sanremo Renzo Laurano, author of “Chiara ride” and friend of Paul Valéry, he encourages to give to the press an juvenile collection of poems. |
THE UNIVERSITY
I decide, instead, to enroll to the Faculty of Economy and Commerce, but beside the studies on Keynes, Pareto, Leontief and Friedman I have always maintained my interest for the poetry and the literature alive. Montale, Sbarbaro, Saba, Ungaretti, Dylan Thomas, Watksins, Oscar Wilde, Rilke have been the great friends of my human adventure. And Pavese, Gadda, Tobino and then some beautiful and craving pages of the “Garden of the Finzi Contini” by Giorgio Bassani.
During the years of the university I studied the ofelimità of Pareto with the same passion with which I deepen the acquaintance of Dante, Shakespeare and of all the Anglo-Saxon literature, without moreover neglecting the roots of the Latin and Greek classic. The only regret is I don’t know the ancient Greek and therefore I have to entrust myself to the reading of translate witnesses.
To say the truth, also the Thomas Bernhard, Joyce, Kafka, Musil, and also that mad full of torments and of adventures that is Jack London, have pushed me to reflections on the formulation of the page and the treatment of the words .
In 1969’s I graduate in Milan and I started my working activity near various national and multinational companies, occupying of Marketing, Promotion, Training, Communications and Customer Satisfaction.
VITTORIA, MARIO FABBRINI AND THE TUSCANY
In 1971, one lukewarm day of end summer with the sun still high on the cupola of Santa Fiore by Brunelleschi, In Fiesole I marry Vittoria, the daughter of the Tuscany painter, Mario Fabbrini. The subject of Art is a constant of the relationships with my father in law and the occasion to deepen the artistic competences also as far as the technical aspect is concerning. Mario Fabbrini proposes his painting in the path of the figurative tradition of the “Macchiaioli”, composing a chromatic language with strongly personality. Together we visit Museums and Galleries discussing on “complementary” and the emerged Currents of years' 70.
I have often accompanied Mario Fabbrini to paint; he preferred the ancients ends of a Tuscany: the the “cottages” abandoned, the empty campaigns, the solitary trees fixed in the melancholic fading of the time. |
Mario Fabbrini: Autumn in Tuscany- Oil on canvas |
He was equipped of a fastest eye in picking the chromatic vibrations of the artistic moment and the changing glares of the light. He affirmed that of a color, ochers, or lackers, it was necessary to know the scent in order to follow it and to capture it as the boys chase and capture the kites when fly in the wind. And all was easy until the terrible day in which an ictus, little generous, forced him to live on a wheelchair without any perception of the lights and the colors of the time. Therefore the cassette of the paint-brushes and the easel remained closed forever.
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THE PROFESSION
The work brings me, before in Puglia, at Monopoli (Br), then to Genoa where, in 1972, was born my unique and adored daughter Francesca, finally to Turin.
The business activity of marketing handled in one multinational company asks me to travel abroad frequently, in particular in the European markets. Travelling for work, achieving commercial results and objectives, is not always pleasant. Sometimes one is not too much well, but the engagements are engagements and they cannot be deferred. In some periods one has been forced to jump from an airplane to another, to prepare conferences and relations in airport, to spend the evening in some anonymous hotel rooms.
Moreover it is possible to gain time in order to visit unknown cities, places of interest, Museums, Cathedral. How I can forget the emotion that I have tried in visiting the house of Goethe, in Frankfurt with those wonderful stove in ceramics? Or the house of Brahams in Baden Baden? Or the Maison Noêl of Toulouse Lautrec in front of the amazing cathedral of Albi? Or discovering the famous Pal Road in Budapest, of the splendid story of Ferenc Molnar, does not exist more, swept away from the cement of regimen palaces.
Sometimes, in my memory s' unexpected anchor yet the Maternity of De la Tour in Rennes or the Mystical Lamb by Van Eyck in the solemn penumbra of the cathedral of Ghent, or the enigmatic abandonment of the Milliner byToulouse Lautrec.
But, since they say that we have only a life, it is pleasant to remember also the sumptuous grilled consumed with the colleagues in Alcalà de Henares just two steps from the house where was born Miguel Cervantes, or the blowout of stockfish and sardines roasted on the coal in the pebbly beach of Nazaré when the notes of the Madredeus accompanied the melancholy of the evening.
OXFORD: A SPEECH IN PART
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Oxford:Isis, as seen from the Folly Bridge |
But it is Oxford the city that more is remained in my heart. Perhaps because I have sojourned over a long time in Buckingham Street, to two steps from the Thames sides where, between Oxford and the Cotswold, it takes the name of Isis (from the Thamesis Latin), and slides slowest towards the Channel. Or, perhaps, because at Oxford was born my nephew Guillaume, the son of Francesca and Patrick Blanchard a Swiss nuclear physicist who worked by the Center of Research near Abigdon. |
Oxford is a very strange city; it is a transit city, not a landing place. They come here in order to study in one of its countless College and make important acquaintances that in the life can always be useful in short in order to place the bases of good futures “parlors” destined “to count” in the future society.
Then one can leave for the life, someone returns to house, others takes different roads, all the people will conserve indelible the memory of an unique, fantastic city, where it is possible taken a walk for the tree-lined avenues of the parks sipping excellent French wine in enormous calyxes of crystal discussing about all: art, poetry, economy, mathematics… of boys and girls… |
Where, nearly every night within icy waters of the Thames a drunk soaked of beer and deep bitterness is collected. But Oxford is even therefore, if you commit an infraction, a bobby probably not fines you , but he makes you such a lecture that you shame to have committed an offence.
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Oxford: Isis (foreshortening) |
At Oxford studied Oscar Wilde, one of literary myths of my youth. He studied at the Magdaleine College where the wild herds of deer graze.
CHRIST CHURCH COLLEGE |
Oxford: Christ Church |
I, instead, have always preferred to walk for the Meadow (the park) of the Christ Church, along the sides of the Thames where the silence of the time is sometime interrupted from the rowing of the crews when compete for the banners of the belongings College. Beyond teams of children play rugby; in front, on the opposite side, the herds of horses at the wild state, observe with curiosity strange white-dressed personages playing Cricket and that, when you less aspect it, abandon themselves to inexplicable applauses.
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While I wandered between the Tom Tower and the nave of the Cathedral, in order to go towards the Botanical Garden, I reconstructed my relationship with the prof. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson who we all know with the name of Lewis Carrol, the Father of Alice in the country of the wonders.
I admit that, when I was a boy, with Alice I had met many confrontations. They given me a wretched edition that had shamelessly insulted and halved the original text. Exactly as it happens still now for many, therefore sayings, classics for boys, like Gulliver’s Travels and Don Quiote. Shortly, the funny and affected story of this prissy and arrogant child stimulating stupid cats and losing her time with improbable rabbits, for me was simply unbearable.
AND IF WE PROHIBITED ALICE TO THE UNDER 18 YEARS?
It is curious to reflect on the faces of the numerous portrays of the personalities that studied at the Christ Church and that they make beautiful show of themselves from the walls of the refectory. There are men of state, plenipotentiary, scientists, economists, princes; In short a bit of everything. Then it is funny to think that the more renowned, the true flower at the eyelet of the gallery, is just that timid and weirdo university professor of mathematics that spent his free time telling stories to the small daughters of the dean.
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Here, on the sides of the Isis it is not difficult to imagine Lewis Carrol when held for hand the small Alice, and together reached the grocery in Saint Aldates Street, in front of to the entrance of the college, in order to buy by the old lady with the voice of sheep a delicious barley-sugar for a snack on the meadow. There is still, today, the Lewis Carroll' s Old Sheep Shop, but the time has transformed it into a little shop for tourists where various souvenirs and costume jewelleries in homage to Alice and her fantastic world are sold.
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Oxford: Old Sheep Shop |
At the Christ Church I have had the fortune to examine manuscripts of Alice in the wonderland and the care with which Lewis Carrol is moved me in seeing how he organized the pages, defined the illustrations, positioned the images. He himself tried to design some personages of the novel, but, alas, as designer was worth very little, (decidedly better the brother), but Lewis dictated the inspiration, structured the narration. He perfectly knew to have between his hands a masterpiece, one of the beautiful story of every literature, he was aware, he kept it close, and perhaps during the night, in the silence of the college, succeeded to read again some pages without stuttering.
Here, I guard Lewis Carrol in my heart, like Alice, Oxford, the slow rustling of waters of the Isis and the voice of the rowers when chant the rowing rhythm.
AND NOW? |
Imperia: panorama |
Imperia: sunset |
Now I divide my time between Imperia and Torino. At Imperia it makes me badly that there is not a Center, a Foundation, a Museum in honor of Edmondo de Amicis that is one of its sons more illustrious and known in the world. At Turin equally it makes badly to see the negligence and the abandonment of the House in which Emilio Salgari has given adventures, dreams and incredible fantasies to the men.
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Mario Fabbrini: Turin, the bridge of Gran Madre - Oil on ply-wood |
Turin: The Po under the snow |
Turin:snowfall at Valentino |
Mario Fabbrini: Turin the church in San Carlo square- oil on wood |
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