Triptychs, namely three works for each of four figurative artists, accompanied by a poem that originates from them and then takes a new direction of its own. Images igniting imagination, a dialogue between two creative expressions that in turn establishes further levels of dialogue. The artists chosen by Annamaria Ferramosca for this book have one thing in common: the centrality of the female figure – Modigliani’s women with long necks and blank eyes, the lived-images rich in colours and symbols by Frida Kahlo, the ecstatic and evanescent figures by Cristina Bove; the exactitude of the physical and psychological details in the portraits by Antonio Laglia. Drawing inspiration and at the same time generously paying homage to the four artists, Annamaria Ferramosca offers a collection of poems constantly reaching out towards the other, towards encounters: between the subject and the artist; the artist and the poet; the subject and the poet; between the alternation of artist, subject and poet on the one hand and the reader-observer on the other. Far from supplying mere captions to the selected works, each poem nevertheless analyses the works focusing on their main features – shapes, colours, composition, background – making them the starting point for the exploration of existential themes and for narrative developments concerning especially women. As Maria Teresa Ciammaruconi explains in the foreword, the women in frame are brave enough to speak out and tell all the modesty, shame, desires, and resignation of real women. A narrative that develops through an alternation of points of view and interlocutors. The women portrayed by Modigliani directly speak to the artist coming and going between their feelings and the stylistic choices of the person who portrays them, whereas those by Antonio Laglia address the reader referring to the artist in the third person. As regards the works by Frida Kahlo, the painter who is also the subject of her paintings translates into words the firm gaze she addresses us from her self-portraits and in one case she speaks to another figure, Xólotl, the dog that leads the dead to the afterworld according to the Mexican tradition. The poet adopts an ever-changing perspective for the computer art works by Cristina Bove, who influenced Annamaria both as a writer and as a visual artist: the third person narration alternates here with the first person of the subject of the work and lets the first person poet appear only in a brief line that lasts a moment, as if to reveal one’s debt towards the chosen artworks. This communicative vivacity focuses on the one side on the continuum between arts: even the lines by Annamaria are vividly pictorial whereas the images in turn suggest narrative possibilities and can be translated into words in the mind of the beholders. The continuum of art and life emerges even more vividly: they can’t be separated, they flow into each other, igniting each other. And they finally catch fire, because Annamaria’s writing is intense and passionate, starting from the creativity that she shows as she handles the language: the words often fuse together, two by two, bringing about a third and deeply suggestive term (sweetexaggerated; calm-blue; doll-in-the-corner; face-abyss; hurricaneye; flowerimprints), they split and expand their polysemy (de-fine me), making room for incursions of direct speech in italics, flowing in rich musical scores. The female figures question themselves and the artist who portrays them, they force us to think. Both curator and art history guide, the poet leads us through this small group exhibition focused on female portraits in a deeply moving itinerary, that we will continue to follow on our own after closing the book.  

TRITTICI
Annamaria Ferramosca
Dotcom.press Edizioni 2016