Fernando Melani carried on his unique artistic
experience in the isolation of his home-studio in Corso Gramsci
159 (
vi), However, his singular historical critical position
projected him, into a context that went beyond his restricted work
environment. His strange activity, as he defined it, brought together
an experimentation of materials and matter with theoretical reflection
that was externalized in many written pages. Melani himself wrote:
Art and theory... the very same, one thing but to codify them accordingly,
one has to understand the operator's theoretical reasoning.
Having become interested in art after , the Second World War, Melani
began to paint in the locai style proposed by the early twentieth
century painters (
vs46)
who still worked with the landscape genre. Once he discovered abstract
painting, his exploration turned to the discovery of this new language,
retracing its history until he arrived at the point where - with
the works formed from the bottoms of wooden crates - the support
itself became the painting. in these years his writings testify
to his polemic and his comparison with figurative painting and with
what is considered its supreme law perspective. At this point his
unstoppable research continued with the experimentation of materials
other than painting and with the theoretical background taken from
other disciplines.
Melani, in one of his writings about his work, wrote: I think of
art as a means and not as an end, as a means for pinning down the
universe's construction as I receive it from experimental physics
and this alone. My own testing ground, I experiment with this. I
would like the descriptions of the subtle invisible originating,
impalpable energy to reach the opaque space deep within me, well
beyond the so-called unconscious, to make it RESONANT... in this
unnamable level the ideas, words that have reached there should
dissolve in the movements that these ideas describe. Then the originating
energy will be the same inside of me as well as outside. Melani's
work in isolation certainly did not distance him from the problems
that contemporary art had to face. Today, thanks to the preservation
of the home/studio where most of his works can stili be seen, the
figure of Fernando Melani has become a reference point for the work
of artists and critics alike.
(n.) refers to the number of the file-card (s.i.) means see information
inside
Fernando Melani's entire experience as an artist and as a man
took place in this laboratory. He Iived in the house for forty
years but this studio is atypical and highly original with regards
to other artists' ateliers because of Melani's singular use of
the environment. Having been deprived of most of the furniture
and the rooms for living quarters, the house was completely dedicated
to containing his works and has become the maximum expression
of Melani's art. The home-studio still houses Melani's works,
experiments and writings.
