WORKS AND PRESENTATION

PRESENTATION EXTRACTS FROM MONOGRAPHIES, CATALOGUES AND MAIN NEWSPAPERS

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All the works introduced in this site belong to public and private collections.  

Only one, but this is the conclusion that is (perhaps) important. That is the return of nation in painting. Nowadays only few can tell stories: someone describes, many imagine, ever so many believe (believe) to invent. Franz Borghese has created not only his typology of  characters, nearly his bestiary, but his “idea of men”. In this "idea" - we must say it - prevails an existential pessimism. Men that perhaps were originally good, today are no more so. They quarrel, they strur about, they attack and eat one another. They are egoist and violent, often neurotic. If we look at the story of culture, all big artists, all big writers have built their ”way”. That of Borghese gets near a storm that is half popular half intellectual, between Ruzzante (we apologize for the comparison) and Jonathan Swift. Below we perceive the look of the cultured man, who throws a glance from the window. People coming and going make him curious and, at the same time, frighten him. In the end he takes shelter in the ironical detachement, at least apparently; but below (at least I suppose) there is a sort of torturing participation, a need of comparison, the attempt to escape the wreck of the soul. Anyway, the “world” of Borghese remains unmistakable: both if you love it and if you hate it. It becomes “a pictorial autobiography", made of interpositions and metaphors. This appears also in his writings and, generally, in his words. There is an attempt to become virgin again, to take shelter in ingenuousness (even if he likes more Voltaire than Rousseau), above all to understand the others. Certainly he lives an everlasting contradiction between the bottom of his culture and the wish to approach the popular mind. But was it not the dilemma of big writers as Zola or Hugo as well ? Was it not the worry of Ensor and Gauguin? So: the “ big scenes story" of Borghese remains balanced between the aristocracy of culture and the popular anthropology. Here we meet the cunning fellows and the idiots, the refined persons and the plebeians. But it is always a tale, pages of a novel, loose sheets. Or, if we want to transfer the comparison to painting, a medieval fresco: a Biblia pauperum understood from everybody. This old nineteenth-century tint is only a trick: an "invented time" for siting the yesterday and today (and tomorrow too) vicissitudes of mankind. This is more present than the plastic puppets by Jeff Koons or the serigaphated Marylin by Warhol. It is present because - let’s say it - has an universality going beyond fashions: and even he makes fun of them, he flouts them. If we look again at the big Atelier painting, this is very clear: at the end we discover also the remotest spots of his (and our) memory... We also are, certainly, inside the atelier of the painter that pretends to sleep.

Venice 2000                                                                                                                                 Paolo Rizzi

(Franz Borghese - Galleria Orler - Scoletta dei Battioro )

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