Massimo Zuppelli; The Dramas Of Our Time 1970; Five Works

Massimo Zuppelli
Orzivecchi 1939
The dramas of our time: its anxieties, denunciations, and underlying hope
1970
Five works, india ink on cardboard
in 27,17x19,49

Signed at the bottom right.

The dramas of our time, its anxieties, denunciations, and implied hopes: we find all of this in Zuppelli's lithographic prints. For a moment, they seem to bring us back, with great force, to the masters of the past - a touch of Dürer's style, certain little - known compositions by Romanino, hidden away in forgotten churches. But it is merely the thread of a culture that lies behind us, one that no one can sever. The rest is autonomy, the intuition of the artist when he truly is one.

Look at the realistic craftsmanship of these prints. The symbolism is absorbed by the immediate power of the composition and its truth. Here is the Pope pulling the thread of the weary soldier. The crucified figure dominates the scene, projected in raw and desperate form. It is naked and merciless, incredulous and admonishing. The Pope's robes, the Spanish golds, the saints recreated on the stole, the obsessive squiggle of the line that becomes relentless, the tilted tiara - because here, too, nothing escapes the liturgy, still present in the lines.

The crosses continue from panel to panel. Here are three crucifixes, three men and their Golgotha, the prisoners in their flight of pain, their despairing anatomies. Golgotha is also of our days; Christmas is likewise that of Vietnam on the other side of the world—the partisan on the cross, or the partisan of any freedom, his tragic chair of death, and the branches of the tree like a stormy octopus imprisoning and whipping the victim. And fleeing mothers, women reduced to an elemental grief, children barely glimpsed - victims of tomorrow and sorrow upon sorrow, despair upon despair.

To those in the world imprisoned by Christmas joy, by short-lived hope, by the security of traditional bourgeois sentiments, Zuppelli offers the other Christmas - the one from many parts of the world, where it is already Easter in these days, meaning death, with no certainty of resurrection. The other face of America, yes—the one that dismays us. But it is not just the other America, this Christmas of 1970. It is wherever there is violence, death, misery.

This is Zuppelli's message. It is a Christmas message unlike any other.

From the critical analysis, Bruno Marini

in 27,17x19,49

Provenance
Private collection

Conditions
Imperfections.