Paolo Baratella
Life of Paolo Baratella
The real life of Paolo Baratella.
Paolo Baratella was born in Bologna in 1935 of parents from Ferrara. He spent his infancy in Bologna, in Via Lame; his father, a tailor in the service of the Royal Army, had a workshop in the city centre. Then came the war. In 1940 the family returned to Ferrara which, with its horizontal and misty splendour, opened up a world of mysterious presences.
Under the American bombs, the young Baratella, dressed in the Fascist uniform of the “figlio della lupa”, won a drawing competition in his first year in primary school.
At the age of six he decided he would be a painter and would become at least as great as the Ferrara-born Capuzzo, the eclectic painter living on his boat at Codigoro. The tragedy of the war, the evacuation, the air-raid shelters, the bombs, the Bengal lights, the holes ripped out of the ground, the puppet theatre, the great passion transmitted by the puppet-master called Forni and, after the war, the Doriglia/Palmi theatre company, the shocks of the great tragedies of mankind stylised through makeshift, stark lights and shadows. And Gigetto, the ice-cream seller of Vicolo Mozzo Orcabaletta, with the dragon and swan-shaped carts dear to Visconti in Ossessione, down in Piazza Castello, again in Ferrara. Reality in the eyes of a child, the masters of aesthetic education, as well as the hunger and the poverty, the big protests against the landowners: “They’ve killed Balboni…”, silence, a tragedy, the Fascist father commented…
He tried painting with Dante olive oil and the tubes at the centre of the rolls of fabric used by his tailor father and his tailor mother, and the world was made up of tailors and then of saints and of painters who went to the church for soup and decorated the little parish cinema of the Franciscan Friars: none of your Dosso Dossi Art Academy! Cosmé Tura, Cossa, Ercole De Roberti, here they are at Schifanoia to astound, with their incipient beards and spots and geometrical reasonings, with a virtual companion by the name of Giorgio De Chirico. And then in ‘54/’55 on Procida, the island of the poet, to sign of love after having opened wide eyes and soul at the Nazi concentration camps, in a photo exhibition in the foyer at the Teatro Comunale; escape from everything, desire for annihilation. And on to painting in a loft at no. 8 Via Montebello, talking late into the night about Kant and Nietzsche, while mystical anxieties continued to threaten the integrity of the athlete cyclist in solitary search of God. He got to know Manzoni Piero, Antonio Recalcati and Mario Nigro; so as not to die, he lived in Paris for a while, where, starving, he got to know Giorgio Marconi and Tadini Emilio and won the Biennale of San Marino. He got married in 1962!
In 1963 he escaped and displayed in London and then in Paris, selected by an international commission, at the Galerie des Jeunes in Rue St. André des Arts; yes in Paris no less! He became an established artist, with articles in Le Monde and other stories written by Jean Jacques Leveque.
In 1964 Silvia was born; he got separated and fled to Germany, to Bad Godesberg, the suburban administrative centre of Bonn; he met Gunther Grass and displayed in Bad Godesberg and Bonn. Germany became the fundamental point of reference, even in political terms.
“La domanda e l’offerta” brought Baratella, Spadari and De Filippi together in a community of political and aesthetic intentions in a 1967 show in the Galleria del Grattacielo in Milan. But the death of Ardizzone had already ignited the anger of the young artist. The association was to lead to numerous shows of so-called political commitment, while Baratella developed his own antagonistic vision, entirely original and individual. The occupation of the Triennale of Milan and the subsequent terrorist “strategies of tension” increasingly oriented his artistic vision in the direction of the struggle of the social movements.
Working in Germany again, he got to know the artists who really made and spoke politics: Vostell, Beuys, Kienholz, Grutzche, Canogar, Caniaris, Alverman, Monory, Kitaj, Tilson, Arrojo, Rancillac, Staek, Erro, Klasen etc. He fell madly in love with Giovanna Belluomini who was to remain his companion forever. He got to know Costanza and Paolo Sansoni, who with Silvia were to become his children forever.
Exhibitions at the modern art museum of Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Hanover, Munich, Bielefeld, Dusseldorf etc. and Spain, while Franco was still in power. In Paris, the sequester and then the condemnation of a painting (burning in public at Brive) against racism; even Sartre talked about it. Ebb! Terrorism!
Other paintings, other actions, Guttuso Renato! A painting of 23 metres, 3.20 high: Vorrei e non vorrei (I want and I don’t). Vogliamo tutto e subito (We want everything and right now). Gli juppy. Craxi.
Other shows, other paintings, other arrivals and departures. Great experiences with music close up, glued to the paintings, music created specially by Giovan Battista Zotti, by Ivan Fedele – one dead, the other a great and recognised master at the international level – to get to know the roots of being in the world. Sabina Macculi, the soprano who gave voice to the announcing angel who is still asking after man, through to the Fondazione Mudima in 1995 in Milan with great pianist Maurizio Carnelli.
The 1990s found him at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan holding a chair: discovering the hard kernel of art. Rachele was born. He was invited to the XIII Quadriennale of Art in Rome in 1999.
Aesthetic and philosophical and political experiences are still in progress.
In the meantime, Spadari Gian Giacomo died.
Baratella currently lives and works in Milan, in Cuccaro Monferrato and Lucca.
- Baratella at work.
- Bach Hotel, 1981.
- Zarathustra or the retourn trip, 1988.