ONE SELF PORTRAIT EVERY DAY in 2020 : 104

The most valuable lesson I learnt as a budding artist was unintentionally taught to me by my great uncle Zio Mario when I was 11 or 12.

My grandfather, Lamberto, was the youngest of nine siblings. It was an artistic family, both, in the visual arts and musically. They could all play instruments and could transcribe by ear (something that Klara and Emil can do so maybe they have inherited those genes even if they skipped a couple of generations) and all the boys (except my grandfather) had gone to art college and the girls were music teachers or opera singers.

My great grandmother died in 1927 (when Nonno was 14) and two years later my great-grandfather lost all the family money gambling on stocks before the stock market crash and then died of a heart attack.

My grandfather was 16 and was sent to an army school where he learnt to be a mechanic. Zio Mario studied sculpture under Luppi at the Academy of Art in Rome. It was financially tough and when he was offered a job by the architect Brasini to work on the colonial exposition in Paris, he quit.

“Avendo perduto i genitori troppo presto dovetti pensare da solo al mio avvenire nell’età in cui molti miei compagni stavano ancora con la testa nelle nubi dei sogni dorati.”

Anyway, back to the “lesson” he taught me: when I was 11 or 12 I sort of decided I wanted to be an artist and anything I did got praise from people at school and home. Zio Mario was a real artist and I visited his studio in Via Margutta where he explained how he did bronze sculptures with the lost wax technique.

One day he came to lunch to our house and I wanted to impress him – artist to artist – and made a figure out of clay (I remember it looking a bit like the incredible hulk). I showed it to him expecting praise, he glanced at it and told me (maybe not with these exact words) “it’s shit!”.

I am sure I was a bit upset and definitely quite shocked but this put down has really been one my most important art lessons: anything can be art but you can’t just do any shit and put it out there.

13.4.2020.

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