Trebeski - Zanichelli

Alberto Trebeski
Chromatic thoughts
“One invents alone a technique, a procedure; one does not make up a state of mind”.
This phrase of Juan Gris, one of the fathers of modern art and co-founder of cubism, seems to be representative of the pictorial work of Trebeski.
A state of mind, a way of “feeling” and “hearing” a condition of thought which is reflected in actions, gestures, sensations, feelings and hopes which invade our brain.
All this is expressed in the art of poetry, music, architecture, philosophy and in Trebeski with an infinite sequence of “pictorial thoughts” describing a long artistic voyage.
Prior to every constructive act man has painted and the priority of this gesture will always accompany him. Painting, therefore, as an instrument to reflect on the rapport and relationship that man maintains with his “psychological inner self” and as a possibility for a conversation with the infinite universe which surrounds him.
An extension of thought which translates into chromatic matter.
There is not alone an aesthetic value in the works of art, but as in all the artistic production of Trebeski, there is the means and the necessity of approaching the founding values of our life.
His childhood in the Po valley, in those places which witnessed the birth of the poetry of Italian neo-realism with the writings and screenplays of Zavattini and the pictorial images of the naïf and expressionist art of Ligabue, Rovesti, Ghizzardi and Colombo, certainly influenced his first artistic period.
The predominance of a strong contextual rapport with the culture of the Po valley/Emilia led him to leave his professional path (Trebeski holds a degree in engineering from Bologna) to push him to confront that world of pictorial art which comes before any other gesture.
The artistic activity of Trebeski in his first period is characterised by frequent attendance at the artistic workshops of Tode, Pellegrini, Gradi and Leoni, which brought about in the artist the first fundamentals of an expressionist language with characteristics and references to the sphere of romantic art.
In the figurative themes of landscapes and still life, Trebeski uses almost a monochromatic style of colour which seems to wrap and blend the subject and background into a single image. There is certainly in this initial expressive method a strong artistic evocation of the 18th century classicism of Bolognese painting, encroaching it with a personal linguistic specificity of slender and vibrant deformations of the subjects represented.
Perhaps the most appropriate pictorial references to the poetry of the Trebeskian language can be found in the expressionist work of Alexy Jawlensky such as “Brughiera di sera” of 1911 or “Piccola variazione” of 1917 where the landscape (natural element) and the sky-line of the cities (unnatural elements) seem to merge into a single prospective image. The conceptual aspect is seen in the lengthening of the traditional canons of a prospective image, by way of a visual fusion of the line of the horizon with the visual point of the subject.
Therefore an anti-classical language in which the use of equilibrated colours transforms the outline of the work’s figurative elements in a “veiled” and “vibrant” field of image in which the drawn subject, be it a person or a landscape, symbioses with every element of the work’s composition. A sort of pre-informale which has, in its chromatic equilibrium, an important moment of interrelation between the various elements of the work.
Also the works of Adol Holzel in “Perdono”, a religious scene dated 1906 or his stupendous “Paesaggi ornamentali” of the early 1900’s and the works of Emil Nolde such as “L’adorazione di Magi” of the beginning period of the 1900’s, seem to be precise models of reference to his initial expressive language.
This emotive representation as defined by Renato Barilli during a visit to Trebeski’s workshop towards the end of the seventies is the dominant theme of an “expressionist-baroque” painting which links the gestural and sensual aspect with the fundamental theme of his historical and cultural matrix as a painter.
It will be a journey which brings him to the “simplification of the image”, so defining his subsequent artistic production.
Perhaps a means to introduce us to the “mystery of the appearances”, a sort of mystic language which, in some works, invades the field of faith and religion, but perhaps more realistically it is a definitive introduction to the primordial elements of a “figuration-deformation-abstraction” which will characterise the pictorial work of Trebeski in the eighties and taken up with greater chromatic gestuality in his work of the nineties and in that of the most recent period.
In one of my earlier opinions I defined it as “entropic painting” implying, in the work of Trebeski, that there is always the possibility of accepting in the formal, expressive, chromatic composition other elements, sequential scores, gestures which can superimpose or integrate with the initial structure of “Opere aperte”, catalyst of Trebeski’s silent and very introspective thoughts which seem to evocate, with this specific language of his, the desire for a recovery of the historic memory of the artist: places and fundamental values of his youth.
Essentially I believe one can speak of a simple “popular art” as in the images of landscapes and urban scenes in the pictorial works of Zavattini (also the same equilibrium and chromatic score seem to be a direct reference) and, perhaps, with a greater gestural impact, the works of Trebeski seem to talk with the themes of “expressive freedom” of the Cobra Group, in particular K. Appel in the deformation of the image and of A. Jorn in the fluidity of the lines and colours by means of a perfect equilibrium of chromatic surfaces as in the stupendous work “Sulle ali dei cigni” of 1963.
Trebeski therefore seems to sweep in his research to the artistic matrices which have a meeting place in the “subtle introspection of myself” and the “contextuality of the places” the conceptual themes of a personal artistic language.
This “new figuration” codifies not only in a laceration of the image but in the poetry of a subjectuality which is the reflexion of a veiled romanticism and of a need to recover the social aspects of contemporary life.
It is perhaps the meeting with Primo Conti in the eighties or the influence of Carlo Corsi (from the same town as Trebeski) which determined the artistic canons of his painting. Figures wrapped in a haunting melancholy, a romanticism of the landscape which transforms ideally the contamination of a mass-media society and ever always constituted by virtual and ephemeral aspects.
The successive step for Trebeski is getting close to the expressionist-abstract painting of the linguistic influence of German neo-realism of the eighties of A. Kiefer, M. Luperz and G. Baseliz and of the search of the figuration of Italian trans-avant-garde and in particular S. Chia, E. Cucchi and M. Germanà and pushing himself towards an elegant and lyrical virtuoso-expressionism of J. Schnabel.
This important effort of researching the themes of contemporary art in the eighties, brought Trebeski to an encounter, perhaps unexpected, with a more abstract language derived both from a pictorial transformation of the subject (figure and place) in polychromatic forms and background as a recovery of the first abstract matrices of W. Kadinsky as well as from that equilibrium of composition produced from the “chromatic fading” as in the pictorial research of A. Corpora.
In fact I also find references to a sort of surrealist painting, intimate, but of simple chromatic perspectives in the first works of G. Sutherland as in “Sunset behind the hills” of 1937 but interpreting it with a personal poetic language.
With attentive reflection, Trebeski takes us to the point of departure of his “artistic story”. This abstract gesturality of the Italian landscape is common in the artists of his same region: Zavattini, Mandelli (both of Luzzara as is Trebeski) and Morlotti for whom the place of origin (in this case a small village of the lower Reggio, sited on the Po river) has been able to define his first linguistic themes joining them with a constant continuity with his recent work.
A sort of fine “Arianna’s thread” which blends in an interesting and sophisticated “unicum pittorico” the personal and artistic story of Trebeski: place, memories and art.
As R. Birolli reminds us in a letter of 1955 sent to his art dealer A. Cavellini of Brescia: “Colours and forms are those of reality. Whatever we invent answers to the very process of nature and it is never arbitrary. Now the sea is tired and it’s bloated and oily. The light is an intense spectre, seeming a paranoia of nature. I had a great moment of happiness when I came inside at sundown to think of the external rage amongst the whispering quietness of the walls”.
With these sensations of colour and forms representing reality, Trebeski has accompanied us on a fantastic voyage of art.
Looking forward that he will soon gift us many more adventures.
Sergio Zanichelli
Sergio Zanichelli: Essayist and modern and contemporary art critic, Professor at the University of Ferrara.