The Engraved Work of Beatrice Palazzetti

The Engraving is the art to produce signs on a hard surface, the matrix, that receives the ink and then yields it to the sheet, giving life to a destined image to being multiplied but that keeps however the uniqueness of the invention. The Engraving broadly speaking is a technique that takes advantage of a determined matter, from it gushes a creative plan, adapted to its characteristics. In the sign, in its infinite variations, lengths, thickness, crossings, the “engraved work” of Beatrice Palazzetti is put into effect, the xylography above all, been born from a strongest interest and a tenacity, "by force of hand", would be said, according to an antique way.
In the 1900's, the German Expressionism gave great impulse to xylography, because tied to an archaic, popular, connected with the figurative tradition of Northern Europe, of the 15th century, in which a specialized craftsman "Formschneider" engraved the tablets the artist designed. In the corrosive and cutting xylographic image, artists like Kirchner, Pechstein, Nolde, Munch declare their existential drama, their inner suffering, using a tenacious material, the wood that, then like today, resists to the action of the hand and of the iron, to the pressure of the press that impresses the trace on the sheet. Certain and sure gestures reveal their real presence in the xylographic part that has therefore an essential "thrifty" character, rigid and angular, valued in the natural fiber.
In the artistic path of Beatrice Palazzetti, the personal didactic experience characterizes and conditions the choice of the expressive instrument: an occasional approach provokes in herself a strong inclination, nearly passional towards xylography, than containing force and lyricism, seems to solve the formal disagreements inside of her own expressiveness. In the absolute contrast of black and white, alternated in a poetic dimension, not scratched from the use of the color, all the interpretative wisdom of the shape is condensed, in a contradictionary path often painful, than now brings to light speculated aspects, now of simple communication. The “massello” wood has its own spirit, hidden in the wefts, in the irregularity and roughness of the surface, offers the input to the creation and it is not an obstacle which to oppose violence, rather the space of "making" that, dyeing itself of ink, it absorbs all the essence. The iconographic index chosen by the artist, exceeds the limits that also belong to the natural universe, bihomorphic: from the sheets it seems to stand out the substance of the bark, of the branches, of the leaves, of a primordial matter. We recognise a compositive outline of a dreamlike taste, an amniotic space, similar to the sea abysses, populated of primitive beings, enclosed in large valve with the eyes "blocked" to find in the dark a dim of light. Remove the matter with the burin, the gouge, with simple and magical tools in the meantime, in order to make the image emerge from it, with its soul, is for Mrs Palazzetti a fascinating and intriguer game, full of culture and history. In the xylographic method, of direct engraving the artist finds again her own nature and above all the possibility to change "route" during the work course, without disturbing the original idea to the contrary of what happens in the indirect procedure of the etching, where an external element, the acid, conditions the plan course. White, black, gray, "absent” tonalities, shape a poetic universe, are details, elements of a hypothetical writing that codifies the licence of the imagination, of sensibility, of emotions otherwise inexplicable. The seduction of the non-colors leads the artist to draw from them all the possible gradations, created with the contact of the light and the atmospheric fine dust. In the Structures series, Beatrice Palazzetti sounds her soul with nervous releases, senses requests, dipping herself in the wrapping and expanded spirals, in the structural nodes that allude to prehistorical forests, misty wefts, ocean beds, resonant waves, far horizons. In the essential of the story made for "signs", the artist shapes a diary where a secret is revealed, an intimacy enclosed in the folds and the traces dugged on the surface. It seems that in the sheets of paper, refined notes follow one another from the memories, from the daily experience but also from an artistic culture that recalls on the one hand a surrealism of a cosmic value, far from the psychical automatism, and on the other an abstract language that privileges the continuous iterance of the circle, the perfect shape for excellence, symbol of the spirit of the universe. Running the titles of the most recent works, we are able to pick the references that often define a formal kind: Trame, Simmetria, or if they refer to pieces of pure naturalism: Paesaggio cosmico, Verso la luce, aspire however to overcome the borders of a latent recognition.
In the sheets are traced fragments, interrupted segments, lines, spirals, circumferences, background paintings intersected and fluctuating from which weft are generated, like for spell, further geometric-fantastic solutions; it often appears as a screen, a sea bed on which shadows are showed, profiles like glares in a mirror, veiled lapped from the breath of the wind. Sometimes, you can notice along the margins of the surface a "wing", a spikier and darker curve that sinks its tearing profile in the woven signical material, in order then to withdraw or to draw back, offering space to the advanced of a lunar light, transparent and adamantine. In the xylographic images the artist expresses its own desire of absolute, launching almost a challenge to the gravity law: the shapes never have a pause, ramble, do not rest on anything, in a continuous and precarious balance, they run after the conquest of the fantasy territories.
Susanna Misiano
Art critic

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