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拍品专文
Painted in 1960, the year that Gastone Novelli had his first solo show at the Galleria La Tartaruga in Rome, A is an enigmatic, yet entrancing example of the artist's most characteristic work. Like a blackboard left at the mercy of an obstinate child, the canvas is frantically covered with rows of the letter A. Embedded among this field of As, a crossword appears on the right: displaying the words 'RADIOCITY', 'LOI', 'INDESIDERO', it comprises terms remotely familiar, crossed-out cases and painted-over letters. In addition, lists of 'horizontal' and 'vertical' directions and indications appear next to it. Incomplete and incomprehensible, these frustrate the viewer's desire to crack the riddle of the picture. The multiple media used on the canvas, moreover, creates a surface of conflicting forces: pen scribbling on paint, paint obscuring graphite, wax crayon blurring the oil. The logic and linguistic rigour, which the crossword evokes, is undermined by the very structure of the picture. Abstracted in its relentless repetition, the letter A invites for a detached interpretation of language, in which signs and words loose absolute meaning, becoming traces of a difficult, fragmented expression.
In 1958, two years before painting A, Novelli published Scritto sul muro. The book, comprising twenty-six lithographs, each dedicated to a letter of the alphabet, materialised the artist's interest in the encounter between image and language. On that occasion, Novelli wrote: 'To draw an image by digging in one's self or in life is becoming more and more difficult (). It is like wanting to write something with an alphabet still to be invented. Matter becomes arid, the signs though and broken up by the writings, by the chaps, by the scratches which exclude any possibility of satisfaction, in order not to indulge in the illusion of the 'known''. Works such as A, seem to translate this sense of impossibility and broken communication that Novelli set to overcome in his work a couple of years earlier. At the same time, the picture underlines Novelli's dialogue with the artists of his time, in particular Cy Twombly, whom the artist met in the late 1950s.
In 1958, two years before painting A, Novelli published Scritto sul muro. The book, comprising twenty-six lithographs, each dedicated to a letter of the alphabet, materialised the artist's interest in the encounter between image and language. On that occasion, Novelli wrote: 'To draw an image by digging in one's self or in life is becoming more and more difficult (). It is like wanting to write something with an alphabet still to be invented. Matter becomes arid, the signs though and broken up by the writings, by the chaps, by the scratches which exclude any possibility of satisfaction, in order not to indulge in the illusion of the 'known''. Works such as A, seem to translate this sense of impossibility and broken communication that Novelli set to overcome in his work a couple of years earlier. At the same time, the picture underlines Novelli's dialogue with the artists of his time, in particular Cy Twombly, whom the artist met in the late 1950s.