Poetry etched on a copper plate

Towards the end of 1975, Giulio Einaudi published a small volume by Pier Paolo Pasolini. In all there were just 90 pages, with a mysterious, fascinating title: " The Divine Mimesis". An unfinished book, perhaps the waste-book of a larger, more ambitious project: a sort of journey through the earthly inferno, divided into "cantos". The allusions to Dante’s Divine Comedy are infinite, starting from the bewilderment felt by the poet midway through his earthly existence. Pasolini was to die while busy on his work and so we are left with these 90 pages, filled, moreover, with very evocative photographs. The poet imagined a sort of photographic poem to be inserted in the context of his research, showing that he had grasped long in advance the transformation process in communication, from the traditional way using words to that of images. What does this little book have to do with Cordio’s work? It has to do with it in this way: every time I picked up the volume I always ended up lingering over the first page of the second canto, and there a singular process started of symbiosis between the things I read and the images that were suggested to me by reading. Read this page with me: "I saw him walking ahead of me, up the slope strewn with innocent weeds: in one of those places in the world where, in spite of all that has happened, what stile matters is the grass - the tufts of grass spring massed like bands of beggars, with gypsy-like smells in the compact purity of rural epochs - the immortal broom, the poor, fleeting acacia - which only at that moment of the year revelled in its triumph: of big, brittle flowers, one heaped upon another, smelling with the shamelessness of the stupid, of the innocent - or nice, warm elders, transparent robinias and the other pure trees: the mulberry, the vine, the oak -and those rather mysterious ones, common in the lowlands, the poplar, the alder, the willow - and the fierce eucalyptus with its grey- red foliage, recalling foreign climes - the mahogany and the mango, coloured by the lymph of one turning green on dying - or the Kenyan acacias, red and green - and cinnamon trees, sugar cane and handfuls of palms against the oceanic light - I watched him as be went up the steep path in the outskirts where the evening light was falling like a storm." Perhaps this is the most beautiful page, the most dense, most inspired page written by the late poet. And it is this that explains that singular process of symbiosis between those words, those images, those sentiments, those emotions and the images, the sentiments and the emotion that come over me every time I gaze at Nino Cordios etchings. You, too, try this exercise: read these pages again and seek that "... evening light (that) was falling like a storm ... " in Cordio’s leaves. Seek it, that light that sinks and you will find it in a hundred plates: always different always mysterious, but always there, spelling out atmospheres and subduing the gaze.

Look at the landscapes in Cordio’s etchings and you will regularly come upon "...one of those places in the world where, in spite of all that has happened, what still matters is the grass ... ". Look in Cordio’s marks and his magical colours, impressed on the plate and taken up on the sheets, and you will find, as though Pasolini had agreed to write the captions for them, that which you have seen or what you think you have recognised, or what you have dreamt: " ... the poplar, the alder, the willow - and the fierce eucalyptus with its grey-red foliage ... the mahogany, and the mango, coloured by the lymph of one turning green on dying ... ". This, then, is that insistent, mysterious relationship that imposed and imposes itself every time I read that page or look at one of Cordio’s works. It may be it is just the wholly subjective result that happens to one who, like me, is used to cultivating a sort of inexhaustible vocation to translate into images all he reads. It may be so, but you try, too. Thinking more about it, my love for these etchings came about like that. Or rather, it was nourished in the course of time with the unwitting illusion that one of the artists (or both of them) allowed himself (or themselves) to be mutually influenced. I am well aware this is not the case, but the fascination of incursions into a world so far removed from the "materiality" of my everyday obsessions is replaced by the inexhaustible possibility of the imagination, inventing kinship and meetings that never happened. A sort of "machine of time and of the feelings" capable of bringing together people who have lived at different times or perhaps -at the same time, but without ever having seen each other or met. People attracted by the same passions, by the same obsessions. It is a small miracle that only poetry and painting are able to work every day! It may also be that no such link exists, that it is merely the outcome of a frame of mind of the writer: but what does it matter? Is it not perhaps permitted in this field to create innocent little impostures? The other reason that explains my passion for Cordio’s etchings stems from the fascination many feel from that incredible blend of pictorial inspiration and perfect craftsman's skill that exudes from every sheet produced by the artist’s press. No-one has ever succeeded in giving a convincing explanation of the incredible technical perfection of Cordio’s etchings. Do not yield to the temptation of directly asking the artist what he does: he will not hesitate to reveal to you the most secret details of his trade, but do not trust his apparent readiness to tell you all. Cordio well knows that such perfection cannot be transmitted and cannot be revealed. Not even with the most patient explanations. Every time I try it, what springs immediately to my mind is only the great physical fatigue, the infinite patience required to make his poetical inspiration, his pictorial skill, coincide with the complications of the chemical and manual process of etching. Think of the difficulty of making his marks coincide with the nuances of that infinite gamut of colours that Cordio invents in every sheet. Yes, in every sheet, for there can never be a single one of Cordio’s etchings that is perfectly like any other: in a world obsessed by the need for mass multiplication of everything, Nino Cordio day by day renews the little miracle of the uniqueness and the authenticity of every item of his work. It is thus natural to think of the Renaissance tradition that made the artist a sort of "foreman" in a work site, small or large (a church, a palace) or in his studio. But every time I think of Cordio, of his press, of his inks, I think it more proper to call what is termed every, artist’s "studio" rather a "workshop". Ask how he found the lime to prepare the "mortar" for the frescoes. You will find that chemical science can do a great deal, but that for certain things you have to turn to Renaissance tradition or even to Roman tradition. These are the things that come to my mind looking at Cordio’ s works. Take them as a personal testimony that justifies this "incursion" into a field where professionals could have used a more logical, more correct language, bringing out the many hundreds of facets of the complex personality of this artist.

And if the wish to testify is not enough, add to it the great love that these sheets have for years and years evoked in me for a painter who "scratches" his poems on the copperplate. He does it today, as he did yesterday for people like me, like you: liable time after time to be astonished by a miracle which, fortunately, has repeated itself for so many years.

1986

Ottaviano Del Turco