Testimonials - WEBSITE X5 12.0.6.24 - ART AND PHILOSOPHY OF PEACE FRONTEVERSISMO by Giuseppe Siniscalchi
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Philippe Daverio
(art critic, journalist, television presenter and lecturer)
Fronteversismo
"I have never attended painting courses or had "masters", except those of school classes and except of course the well-known characters that I had the good fortune to know and attend in years like the great sculptors Kengiro Azuma, Giorgio Berlini and the painter Fernando Leal Audirac."
Thus he describes his artistic training Siniscalchi, and therefore to say that he is perhaps still looking for a profession may seem a little irreverent given his established position in the forensic world , but it is what his autobiography of words and images returns to us. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that lives that precise tension between two vocations that has historically characterized more professional and artistic paths than you believe: from customs officer Rousseau to Winston Churchill just not to aim high, and just to understand the variety of possible combinations. But Rousseau had no vocation for customs administration, while Sir Winston had plenty for politics and, in his own way, for open-air landscape painting... very british indeed.
Siniscalchi is instead the type of self-taught painter who finds in spirituality and philosophy the necessary area of reflection from which to make the pictorial invention, and he goes to look for it in the Japanese cultural tradition , as indeed did many artists both visual and word in the twentieth century.
Why? First of all for biographical reasons given the composition of his family, but also for reasons that go beyond this important data, and that can be, basically, these: the suggestion and finality of the gesture in calligraphy and the discipline of thought and action in Japanese mysticism. Elements that , reading how much Siniscalchi writes about himself, we find also under trace: when he introduces the calligraphy in his pictorial space, when he manifests his passion for paper - even if the Fabriano that fascinates him is not the rice paper - when he lets himself be involved in the search for a perspective of peace and faith stimulated by important meetings for his inner search.
Moreover, "Art and Peace" is the motto he chose on the homepage of his website, and today we know how important the fingerprint of ourselves that we want to entrust to the network is. So an itinerary between painting, philosophy, meditation, faith. It is a logical consequence of this articulated path that the traditional dimension of the canvas should be close to Ours, and that therefore its imagination should be directed to all the surfaces of a painting: including the frame and the verse, up to induce him to theorizations that do not escape a certain ironic seriousness as the idea of "Fronteversismo", making this spatial dimension a pictorial program is also tempered by the awareness of the importance of the voids as taught by Zen philosophy.
The framework object (today almost on the edge of contemporary art) seems to be for Siniscalchi the safe and indispensable point of reference for a type of pictorial expression that is within the "recognizable" and does not want to be bound to school or trend definitions. So it doesn’t make much sense to talk about influences or references to art history, because here we are dealing with an essentially personal, intimate, autobiographical expression, which probably has its roots in the need to share the stages of the different cultural discoveries that life has so far reserved for Siniscalchi.
And this matrix he claims in his detailed writing accompanying this catalogue, reporting with punctuality of the different passages that accompanied the formation of his artistic sensitivity in relation to the different steps of his family life first as a child and son, then as an adult and father (and husband). Joseph’s work can therefore be defined essentially as a "non-verbal diary", even if the word is installed there with its symbolic and conceptual role. A diary that documents the past but is ready to deal with all the variables that the future can reserve for his personality from different but convergent dimensions of painter, lawyer, connoisseur of Japanese culture and man of faith.
Philippe Daverio a sx con Giuseppe Siniscalchi a dx
Testimony of Dr Gemma Gualdi
Testimony by Dr Gemma Gualdi Magistrate during the international meeting Fronteversismo art and welfar organised in Gravina in Puglia in 2017 .... The work behind her entitled Woman Peace and Nature is one of the works on permanent display at the Museum of Geology and Palaeontology in Matera STONE TALES Inaugurated 17 September 2023
Professor Marco Marinacci
(art historian) Signs of Peace
From the first chance encounter and comparison with the poetics of Giuseppe Siniscalchi, thanks to the presentation of a common friend - I still remember that we were visiting an exhibition curated by the Polytechnic at the Science Museum, unaware of everything that would follow, and it would have been a lot, and it started in the precise instant in which I was able to admire some fleeting photos of his works on the mobile phone; needless to say that the next moment we were already convinced of being animated both by the same passion for art the cultural heritage of our country, and accomplices in the commitment to want to save and enhance - I immediately understood that the tools I had to look at, were not those normally used by contemporary critical analysis, to define the aesthetic boundaries of an artistic experience, in this case too weak, but those solid and tempered of art history, unique able to grasp the message of a poetic so steeped in personal and human history together. In fact, what is presented is a story not easy to tell, because if on the one hand it presents a complex symbolism of archetypal character, from which is generated that language of creative intuition that has its roots in early childhood, bringing the poetics far beyond mere aesthetic limits, to be a true total experience of life, on the other it refines the signs of a semantics that indicates a precise powerful will of the work art: that epiphanic moment, that gesture tearing open the veil of Maya, and even more, that possibility to inaugurate a new world that, according to the unforgettable Hans-Georg Gadamer, belonged only to art. In this inaugural scope consists the deepest message of Siniscalchi’s work, which the history of art teaches through the sign of the great visionaries, Van Gogh in the head, from which he assumes the chromatic witness, and then many others, up to Basquiat, of which continues the track, grafted into the great groove started over 18000 years ago, in the labyrinthine depths of the caves of Altamira, and so come to us. Here and now, to carry forward the saving message of which the art of the great visionaries has always been guarantor. The matrix of Siniscalchi’s painting is in fact of a spring quality that draws deep into each of us, that inner infinity that has always as its first paradigms the sign and the color. From here it is easy to guess what the language is: a primary sign of childhood canon, which speaks of distant memories, so much so that - if the color is symbol - it does not seem risky to define ancestral. If then, as Jacques Lacan teaches, in language the relationship with the Other is established, in the sign of "desire", and as Roland Barthes points out, in that sign you can read the meaning, the ultimate tension of the whole message that the work of art intends to present, here that the poetics of Siniscalchi conceives a sign that unequivocally leads to the Other. An "other" understood as "language" expressed by "desire", but the desire is here that Kunstwollen, that "artistic intentionality", as Alois Riegl called it, which has the ability to make present a real Weltansschauung, a precise and absolute "vision of the world". Here opens an ancient, arcane world, made of an elementary and immediate symbology, in which that pictorial alphabet returns with which every creative gesture since childhood produces its own linguistic universe. And very personal is the symbolic universe of Siniscalchi, whose greatness is to stop exactly there, a moment before the language becomes that of adults, that Babel that escapes the domination of the essential and the immediate, incomprehensible to different cultures, different societies, different identities. A common language, a new Esperanto, seems instead to be able to recognize in this original pictorial expression that, with all its vital and symbolic primary, speaks to anyone, and plays with everyone, with simple gestures and signs, like a child on the beach building his sand castle. And if Kafka taught us that the castle can also be a great, wonderful game for adults, Siniscalchi urges us not to make it a tower, where it is easy to lose the domination of the senses, but to regain, in a primary alphabet of tactile values, the deep meaning. Here appear, from the intentionally infantile language, in a continuous search for the basic ego, to the salvific will, to the idea of a symbolism as ancient as arcane, the primary of the sign language of Siniscalchi. In this poetics germinate the seeds of a new narrative and expressive dimension together, first internalized by the author and then reported in that man who, topòs constant of an iconographic imagination, becomes on the canvas the first observer of reality "beyond" it. A reality spontaneously reworked, and all reassembled in a universe-world of a pictorial nature. And here appears that world, in the many works, and in each of them, that from childhood tell the poetic universe of their author. Beginning with "Rest - meditation after fatigue", in which is found, in the peeled enamel as of cars forgotten in the sun, the memory of a bygone era, distant, a time of games, regained now, in the moment of rest, and memory, in features of a humanity brought back to meditate on itself. Here, together with Rodin’s Thinker, emerges the portrait of Van Gogh: one of the many facts made by Francis Bacon, which is that of the innocence of all humanity. But then the "Children’s Games" are getting more and more difficult, less innocent, as evidenced by the rolling of the fat pastel sign, which quarrels with the canvas, ball of yarn grabbed by an invisible cat that continues to play from a world "beyond the mirror", like that of Alice. Here is a long list of more or less known artists, such as Norberto Proietti or Riccio, a painter from Milan but obscure to the city, who over time have become children, or the greatest creators, as Munari, thanks to that vital and playful sign. In "13" that thread then seems to find a loom, a arcane arcolaio that brings it back to be "sign fabric". It’s hard not to think about Basquiat, and the primitive elements of rock graphics. Always of Milanese matrix, but more complex, the sign in the "Climber", so that on it will stop to reflect for over half a century, from the first exhibition of '62 that will consecrate the research, the group de Cenobio, above all Ugo la Pietra and Angelo Verga. Then the engraving matrix of the "Four flowers" still highlights the desire to search for a sign, but more graphic, Brueghelian in the sense of the Dutch engraving art, like what Van Gogh saw in the works of Rembrandt. A sign that digs, that leaves a trace, and, like the furrow in the earth, intends to receive the saving seed that art sometimes seems capable of germinating. When you enter, as if crossing the doors of Babylon, the "City of Fantasy" - the name is proper, and adds to one of the many invisible cities of Calvin - unfolds a metropolis of Lego that delivers its geometric measure to the huge game of an architect-child, perhaps the small Van Doesburg, certainly the exact opposite of that architect-demiurge so loved by the utopian architects of the eighteenth century, and longed for by the masons of the following century. Behold, then, to warn of the sin of ùbris towards which he risked to meet, with the aspiration to creators of the world and its rules, the "precarious Architectures", which refer to a sign of Piranesian canon, wide in building forms as cruel and contemptuous in denouncing the faltering and absurd balance. Much to be gathered, in "Abstract"around a pure synthesis of forms, as in the last Mondrian, in which to the rhythm of a "Broadway Boogie-woogie" is replaced here a design intent, in blue tones (not by chance aesthetic code of the language of the project in the Anglo-Saxon). But as in sleep innocent childhood, a fleeting nightmarish nightmare, or a dream divinatory, follows the quiet of awakening, accompanied by the sound, paused "Dawn on the lake", in which the trees recompose a view of mold Giotto, passed through the dazzled gaze of the Customs Officer and the pointed and abstract one of Carlo Carrà. Underneath, the figure of that man, seen for the first time that night in July 1888, in a desolate cafe at night, lost in a Paris where only to wander seemed to be Vincent. And Van Gogh then returns to that little man lost in the "Dawn on the mountain", but here accompanied, in his artistic transhumance, by his friend Emile Bernard, whose symbolist brush seem to have been those cows grazing, subtracted to an old canvas (Bretons on the lawn) and reported, as tiles of a mosaic (the key to cloisonnisme), on this, homage to the prehensile fantasy of another great "visionary", a century later. In the deafening prophetic visionary of Siniscalchi’s art, continuing the visual investigation of the works, there are many names that reverberate, from the nocturnal, dreamlike visions of William Blake, to the exuding gestural drives of Pollock, from the enamelled elegant symphonies of color, veteran of the exhausted enchantments of Schifano, the outbreak of a primordial "Big Bang", which can not remember what Kandinsky subverts the laws of the first period "impressionist"of which still seems to keep in mind the expansive page of "quiet under the moon", to throw themselves into the voracious vortex of expressionism. An expressionism that will arrive at a "happiness" all its own, very different from that Joie de vivre of Matissian outcome, because fixed to a precise symbol of redemption, renewed crucified, Bacon and many others - just think of contemporary Hermann Nitsch - will decide to make their own. A precise iconography, which continually returns, as well as the theme of melancholy, specified by the research of Munch, in the figure of the man with the hat, in the symbol of the cross and peace Wa, the moon at sunset, in the reds, in yellow and blue enameled, Recomposing the unity of the primary, they all regroup together in that vortex. But there is more, even more disruptive, than that precarious balance that sustains the codes of Western art: in that deep whirlpool, where strange contaminations are intertwined, in which the sign dureriano connects to that of Vedova and Kline, to then recompose in paniche visions to Bonnard, begins to boil a new primordial broth, which will give rise to a total artistic palingenesi, in You can see a whole new semantic universe. A universe that feeds on the Buddhist figurative culture, in the constant and continuous proliferation of forms, and the Japanese iconographic tradition, in the solid tension that holds it back, bringing everything back to that idea represented by the symbol Wa, ideogram that acts as a bridge between the two worlds and through which the two original signs, the signifiers that indicate the spike (the spiritual nourishment of which art is constituted) and the mouth (the human soul to which art is destined)meet and unite to give life to a new meaning of Peace. Thus we come to recognize that "beacon of peace" light of the new world, the universe that in this way emerges from the depths of the human soul, born from an archaic, primordial symbolism, that apotropaic, used in defense of the sacred and salvific message, unites the signs of a new peace. Peace, the beauty with which art can save humanity.
Simona Tomaselli
(artist and assistant manager)
Giuseppe Siniscalchi
The other half of the moon: the one you can’t see. Here is a WA by Giuseppe Siniscalchi that shines brightly. Siniscalchi’s painting enters the heart like an arcane melody, like a prayer formed by sounds: of the sea, of the wind, of the branches that move, of the snowdrops that melt, of the rays of the sun that shine, between the stars that sparkle in the night but produce an inner echo. All this tells of arcane places that return to recompose man in his noblest and most authentic values. It is no coincidence that it was born in Puglia, a land of colors and intense lights: the blue of the sea and the sky, the red of the earth that hypnotizes, the scents of nature that intoxicate. Here we raise our eyes to heaven and gathering in silence lower them to the earth returns to an ecstatic rite, never forgotten between man and the divine. The sacred that transcends from the self. Ancient gestures today repeated. Siniscalchi says it, understands it, knows that his art can make a contribution. His painting is a "therapeutic mantra" for those who manage to stop for a moment and let themselves be illuminated by his lighted moons of life: his WA. And his painting is so full of "all-round" symbolic values, that it also silently embraces the surface of the back of the canvas and there vigorous stands. The other half of the moon, the one that is not seen, but there is. This tells Siniscalchi. Also of what we do not see, of what underlies latent or do not understand, but that appears and manifests elsewhere. And in this conception of absolute value, his "all-round" canvas pours into a sort of visual philosophical contemplation, which invites the viewer to linger. Siniscalchi reaffirms the need to be open, "empty" in the Zen conception, to be capacious, receptive like children free from prejudices and superstructures. His idea: "going beyond appearances and in depth in every field to rediscover many values today often overlooked in the vortex of daily routine, for greater intercultural integration between people of different countries as indispensable knowledge base for peace, absolute value" and urges "we must consider that most things - as well as many energies and intangibles - are invisible to the human eye..." In July 2014 Siniscalchi published the Decalogue of a new artistic-cultural-philosophical movement that he promoted. The Fronteversismo is born: the other half of the moon, the one that is not seen, that shines elsewhere. The painting on the front of the canvas, which appears visible to the viewer, is completed with the invisible that is represented in the back of the painting. I could say that he was strongly influenced by Mutsue Sekihara, his harmonious Japanese wife and his friend the master sculptor Kengiro Azuma, who among the first subscribes to the frontiversist manifesto sharing the themes. However, as a child Siniscalchi, he carried the "gene" of his philosophy. Child probed the nodal themes of human existence - war, peace, love, the family, and more complex concepts such as "The precarious balance of accumulation" - already imprinting the first footprints to his work in the front and towards the supports, searching for that spatiality that is more inclined to sculptors. Existential themes perhaps explored by all children who care innately, in their fresh authenticity, what really matters. Some episodes of Siniscalchi’s childhood have intrigued me and I sensed it was necessary to follow backwards the common thread of his life to fully understand his artistic message. In Childish drawing: "The numbers" Siniscalchi draws on one side of the sheet of numbers and on the back other missing ones, finding only in a front-to-back reading of the whole set. At first I encouraged him to deepen his childhood sphere and then I found myself observing his obsessive desire to find himself, going back to his first steps, to slip even earlier, to ancient memories, finally rediscovering the "man of every where", lingering in its primordial aspects and perhaps even earlier when humanity all floated in the belly of the universe in that "dark matter" or "divine", which is dear source of inspiration and investigation of scientists as artists and re-seekers of faith. In this omnia work of Siniscalchi there is therefore also the first seed of his language, in a journey that starts from the first man, who raised his eyes to Heaven and dug the earth with strong hands.
As in a construction site I will try to tell this enterprise, showing the photos from the foundations.
It all began in June 2013 with a working conversation with the lawyer Giuseppe Siniscalchi, whom I asked for collaboration for an interreligious event to be organized at the Leonardo da Vinci Museum. Every now and then I met him: an austere lawyer always in a gray suit. Calm. Respectful. Months later, deepening my knowledge, I could see a profound similarity with the same solemn attitude of Japanese culture. He casually told me about his interest in art, showing me his paintings on the iPhone. I immediately recognized the enormous expressive potential and encouraged him to paint to express his talent. And Joseph bent over his canvases and painted, generously, drunk with his own art. It was as if his energy exploded in coincidence even of the sweet waiting of Mutsue. In the course of life our friendships were pleasantly intertwined. There were common projects. The artist in him became forcefully manifest. Christmas 2013 Siniscalchi surprises friends with a calendar 2014 made with images taken from his paintings. A gift that proved to be decisive in developing the idea of publishing a catalogue. It was not easy to get the right time for the packaging of this volume, which was born with my intent to present the works by explaining the deep religious message underlying them, in perfect harmony between East and West. His Muse: Mutsue. Idealized, how solidly present. Silent and tenacious, he joined him, organizing for him a painting course in a state school in Japan. Week after week I retraced the life of Siniscalchi from his first years of life: he showed me the photos, the drawings found in the family drawers, the notebooks of the forgotten elementary in the attics. His personal research became more and more total and anxious. He also wanted to find his old schoolteacher, who recognized him. For Siniscalchi his childhood dimension became essential and had to be placed almost primarily in the catalogue. Just as a butterfly cannot ignore its chrysalis, so also spring owes everything to winter. It was not immediate for me to reconstruct the narrative trying to give back its meaning. There were many trips to Corbetta to the splendid Atelier of Giuliano Grittini, where, as in a construction site, day after day, the catalogue took shape. A year of intense work passed; Siniscalchi’s message matured and became clear in the Manifesto del Fronteversismo. The intervention of Mr. Philippe Daverio increased our enthusiasm. Finally, also from Japan came a valuable contribution in the writing of the M somebody. Shinji Kobayashi. The work seemed to me at that point accomplished. My warmest thanks to the friends who have written the critical contributions and for all the expressions of appreciation that come from all over the world. A special thanks to Professor Emeritus Guido Calabresi who sent us his 'the sum greater than its parts' from the United States of America.
Have a nice trip!
Roberto Zadik
(Journalist and writer)
Zda years the lawyer and painter Giuseppe Siniscalchi paints and realizes canvases full of intense messages and high ideals of peace, harmony and fundamental depths in our tormented epoch. Influenced by Van Gogh, Japanese artists and the contemplation of nature and landscapes, he mixes all these elements in his works creating a very particular sensation in the viewers of his paintings. Here I tried to choose his ten most representative paintings, even if choosing is always complex and summarizing a great artist like him can prove to be a difficult task. Here you will find my reviews, from poet, journalist and art lover, from painting, to music, to cinema and my short biographical card.
THEMES: MOON, NIGHT AND NATURE:
A sense of peace, tranquility, intensity emerges from the work of Siniscalchi and the Moon and night are often very present and immersed in nature. On the sea the moon shines and enigmatic and enveloping illuminates the waters with suggestions and messages that remind us of many elements and cultural and emotional references. From the poems of Novalis, great German opera that dedicated to the night his best compositions, the music of Chopin with that sense of calm and melancholy contemplation of emotions, up to the song of the Doors "Moonlight Drive or the classic 80s "Moonlight Shadow" by Mike Olfield. The moon is omnipresent in many paintings by this painter and also overlooks the fields and lands, shines on the houses and in the middle of the sky and with its bright white does not prevail but also illuminates the canvas. The moon from ancient times has inspired poets, painters, especially Van Gogh and English naturalists, composers, such as Beethoeven and Debussy. And even Siniscalchi transfers this attraction to the night star and to the night in an effective, simple and intensely harmonious and inspiring way for all of us.
Among his most beautiful and lunar paintings I insert:
A MAN ALONE BEFORE NATURE
Alongside sunsets, sunsets, moons and sunsets in some paintings appears a kind of ubiquitous symbol. Seated and tiny, message of humility or solitude, of serene contemplation or isolation of modern man before nature or without anyone but himself. Like the lonely poet Leopardi in front of the Moon and the wandering Shepherd in Asia looking at the starry sky. Like the artist in indifference and the sentimental in the civilization of consumption and image that we live today. Like the moderate among fanatics and peace in the midst of war. In Siniscalchi’s paintings man is little represented but sometimes appears and is always alone and never in portraits but always reduced and as a background, giving centrality to nature and landscape. He brings us back to the primordial sense of space and the Moon, of the sun and the sunset detaching from that longing for characters, portraits and human figures that so characterized painters like Schiele, Modigliani, Hayez or Andy Wharol who spent their lives immortalizing human beings. Siniscalchi’s canvases express a message of brotherhood and at the same time of great spirituality and are suitable for all types of audiences even if ideological, religious or political references are not lacking. the theme of peace and references to Japan and the philosophy of the Far East, they are expressed with intensity and sensitivity in respect of different cultures. This is his strength, representing nature and the world in an expressive and polite way and characters who are never protagonists but observers, like every true artist, of reality and his dreams, Questo artista non si mette in evidenza ma crea le sue opere con discreetly, humility and delicacy values that are being lost and that the fronteversista art of Siniscalchi considers as its main elements.
The most beautiful paintings with the man in the background:
Resonance on Twitter
Nina Ansary
The paintings of Giuseppe Siniscalchi have always had great resonance on the most modern and open systems of communication. On social networks, Twitter has opened the doors of international consensus to Fronteversismo. A large number of front/back paintings have been chosen from Twitter favorites by professional journalists, from institutions (such as the Louvre and the Expo Pavilion of the UK and Colombia) as well as celebrities from leading international newspapers (paper and television).
Azadeh Ansari (CNN International News Editor & Writer. Twitter profile: @Azadeh), Azadeh Williams (International journalist, IDG, The Times UK, Reuters. Lecturer at Macleay College. Twitter profile: @azkmediatweet), Yasamin Beitollahi (Digital Media Professional, Huffington Post Contributor, Passionate about Gender Equality. Twitter profile: @ybeitollahi), Christina Park and Antwan Lewis (Fox 5 TV New York).
Great admirer of Giuseppe is also the Iranian historian and writer Nina Ansary (Twitter profile: @drninaansary), champion of the rights of Iranian women and not only. Among the VIPs who do not require presentation and who follow the Fronteversismo there are Carol Alt, Ornella Muti, Julian and Nino Cerruti, Paula Tooths (@paulatooths writer and journalist, lawyer , teacher of yoga , sport and proper nutrition)Chrissy Horansky, Monica Triglia and Myriam Defilippi.
Anna Serova (violist)
«I met Giuseppe Siniscalchi through common friends who introduced him to me as a lawyer. With time I had the opportunity to discover his exceptional artistic sensibility that is accompanied by a generous soul full of light».
With the times that run, when among people and among peoples the fundamental thing that is the dialogue is missing, art for me is the way out. Art gives us all the opportunity to feel united in feeling the same emotion: listening to a piece of music by Bach, watching a ballet or admiring a painting. We don’t need to speak the same language to appreciate beauty. My wish is that what Dostoyevsky wished be realized: "Beauty will save the world"».
The strength of Fronteversism lies in its basic idea: peace, beauty, union between the various arts. Artists, scientists and philosophers from different geographical areas, with different histories and belonging to different religions, can exchange ideas and, through this fertile dialogue, enrich the world, make it better».
The Universality of Fronteversism allows this artistic and cultural movement to go beyond borders and barriers: when something (be it a painting or an idea) is beautiful, it is always beautiful and it is for everyone. Above all, it is useful for humanity as a message of peace. I personally believe in man and in his wisdom and I think that every artist has a mission: to remind humanity to draw, as much as possible, to its own wisdom».
Master Shinji Kobayashi
former art teacher and former president
of Japanese museums such as Joetsu
The pictorial world of Giuseppe Siniscalchi
The Italian painter Giuseppe Siniscalchi, a lawyer by profession, is working in a series of paintings through which he intends to merge the Japanese and Western artistic tradition. With this writing I intend to express some of my assessments on this pictorial attempt of Joseph. I apologize if before I address this topic I take some time to tell you an episode. I was in the third grade (1950), when in the hour of Western history the professor gave us a speech that impressed me deeply. It is said that when Francesco Petrarca, well-known Italian poet and philosopher of 1300, after climbing a mountain and reaching the top, exclaimed: "The mountain I have under my feet". The professor added that this historical fact is like the symbol of the high superiority of the human being over nature, represented by the mountain. At that age I found this speech wonderful. I thought, in fact, that if through the Renaissance mankind had been able to obtain abundant material benefits, This was thanks to the application of the principle of Western civilization that considers nature to be a tool in the hands of man for the achievement of his profits. It was the year 1950, when in Japan the effort was made to regain the prosperity lost during the years of the Pacific War. It was the time when the appeal that circulated everywhere like a refrain was to copy throughout the system of Europe, reach it and overtake it. The consequence was that in those years the traditional Japanese values underwent a profound change.
Fu nell’anno 1956, proprio quando la suddetta sete di ricostruzione era giunta all’apice, che lo scalatore giapponese Maki Aritsune raggiunse la vetta Manaslu della catena himalayana. La notizia, diffusa in tutto il mondo, ai giapponesi offrì una luminosa occasione di riscatto dal clima di sfiducia che prevaleva. Quando lessi il diario della scalata che Maki pubblicò con il titolo “La scalata del Manaslau”, spontaneamente rievocai le parole del Petrarca che avevo udito in terza Liceo. L’approccio dei due verso la montagna è del tutto opposto. Maki Aritsune non usa mai espressioni come conquista della montagna. Scrive invece che ha raggiunto la vetta abbracciato dalla montagna ed esprime il suo rapporto con la montagna come una convivenza, e mai usando espressioni di contrapposizione verso la natura. E’ il 和 (WA), il sentire profondo che scorre sul fondo della cultura giapponese. La lettura del testo di Aritsune mi commosse profondamente e da allora provo altrettanto profondo dissenso verso le parole di Petrarca. Fu un’esperienza della mia identità giapponese. Detto ciò, giunti qui, dobbiamo riconoscere che l’andamento del mondo, Giappone compreso, è stato proclive al pensiero europeo simboleggiato da Petrarca. Il risultato è il raggiunto beneficio dell’odierna ricchezza materiale. Ma anche un altro risultato: infatti noi stiamo sempre più smarrendo il nostro legame con la natura e il legame fra di noi. Non possiamo chiudere gli occhi davanti all’evidenza che ci troviamo in una carestia spirituale, assaliti da un vago senso di instabilità e di solitudine. Ci sarà mai una via liberatoria da questa situazione di crisi? In un recente incontro Giuseppe Siniscalchi showed me his paintings and told me about his artistic vision. Although unintentional, I spontaneously evoked the speech just made about Petrarch and Maki Aritsune. I found it very interesting that Giuseppe, a fellow citizen of Petrarch, a few centuries later sought the fusion of Japanese and Western art. It was with joy that I saw that finally the fusion of Japanese art so well represented by Miki Aritsune and the Western one was happening through Mr Giuseppe. I also thought that this could be a saving opportunity from the spiritual crisis in which the man of today pours. It could shed a ray of light on the future of humanity. It was to explain how this thought of mine matured that I felt it necessary to begin the speech just made. In 2011 at the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci in Milan, Giuseppe’s first meeting with the Japanese sculptor Azuma Kenjirō took place. It was this encounter that awakened in Joseph a deep interest in Japanese culture. So Joseph decided to dive into the art of painting, towards which he had felt inclined since childhood. To engage in him this passionate His search for an expressive form is the strong attraction he felt towards the Japanese forms animated by 和 (WA). Upstream of this attraction to Japanese culture, it is probably to recognize the presence of his beautiful wife, native of Jōetsu. The fact that Giuseppe, a typical son of Western culture, shows a deep interest in the Japanese sensibility of 和 (WA) and has made this sensibility the motivating energy of his pictorial research, all this - not to say - makes me very happy. The understanding of Japanese culture was always difficult for Westerners, but the fact that initiatives like this now rise to international prominence holds great significance not only for Japan, but for the future history of humanity. So I think. The paintings that Joseph paints in temper are presented to the world as something unique. The characters in his paintings transcend the differences of this or that nation or ethnicity. They seem citizens of a cosmic environment. In all his paintings the dimension of the affable relationship between the human being and nature is perceived in great measure. Not only that, it is also perceived as a symphony between the eternal magnificence of the cosmos and the precariousness of human life. In Joseph’s paintings is imprinted the strong message that everything that exists is 環 (WA), united in a round bond, without any discrepancy. Obviously this also means a demand for peace for the whole world. The two ideograms 和 (WA) and 環 (WA) - different but from the same reading (translator insertion) - in the Japanese language evoke a related meaning. Everything makes me think that Joseph is aware of it. Joseph’s paintings have a very simple structure. Precisely because it is not lost in technical devices, the painted scene is essential but full of hints, it seems a contemplative moment. Among the paintings that Giuseppe showed me I choose one, on which I want to express some impressions. I don’t know the name of this painting, but it doesn’t matter. At the center of the picture is a pretty woman with oriental features, folded down, covered up to the eyes by a hat. Above is painted the moon that pours a pale light on the woman and the surrounding environment. I interpret that Giuseppe, because he is Italian, has painted the woman with oriental features to mean that he has painted from a level beyond all belonging, both his western, but also the eastern one. The feet and hands of the painted character are sunk into the earth, as if they were born from the belly of the earth. The painted woman is one with the earth, and together she is the daughter of the earth. At the same time it is one with the cosmos, beyond the boundaries of time and space. This is the call that comes from the 和 ideogram painted over the hat. Seeing this painting by Giuseppe, I spontaneously evoked the ideogram 能 (NŌ) of the Japanese theatrical tradition. The reason is this: in the events scene in the theater 能 (NŌ) there is no separation between past, present and future. There is represented the world beyond time and space. The scenography is simple, without any additions. The actors' faces are covered by the mask. The sound effect is surreal. Under the name Takigi Nō - No of firewood (translator’s note) - the Nō is also performed outdoors. In a sense 能 (NŌ) is the place of the solemn encounter of nature and the cosmos. All existing beings correlate in time and space, in the round bond of 環 (WA). It is in this sense that I recognize that in the essence of Joseph’s pictorial world there is something that communicates with the world of 能 (NŌ). It is natural to bow your head before the assiduous effort that this man conducts for the harmonious fusion of Japanese art and Western art. Its activity is animated by 和 (WA), universal pacification. It is also prayer for the achievement of world peace. I express the hope that his activity will continue in the future, for the liberation from the spiritual famine that humanity is going through today. It may seem that this text, the preamble included, ended up becoming a rather arbitrary speech. I beg your pardon.
Father Luciano Mazzocchi
(chaplain of the Japanese Catholic community of Milan)
Wa-Pace
Certain words tell the meaning they contain already from the vibrations of their pronunciation, even before the reader consults its meaning on the vocabulary. They are the words that have preserved the purity of their origin, because they are the most precious and dear to the human heart. One of these is peace. The Latins said pax. Those who pronounce peace dwell on a, almost resting in peace. The opposite is war and already the pronunciation corrugated by the u and the two r arouses the impression of something irritating. In addition to words, signs and images also have the ability to express the meaning they indicate, without emitting any sound. Familiar to the peoples of the Mediterranean are the symbols of peace in the olive branch and in the dove. The dove is a gentle bird that loves to be chased by children, so the Holy Spirit relies on his image when he wants to manifest himself to men. The olive branch speaks of peace with the color of its green and silvery leaves. It also produces oil drupes, the element that gives softness to the dried skin and vigor to tired limbs. To every Italian, the olive tree recalls the undulating lands of the South, where nature is the mother of peace with its landscapes that perfume with its many aromatic herbs. The ideogram, born in China and later migrated to Japan, which says peace is 和 - wa. The ideogram is an image, not an idea. As an image it is the mother of many applications, of many shades. The image can be seen as a noun name, or as a verb, or as an adjective. Also the Italian language, beyond the original meaning of peace as a subject, combining with the verb to do conjugates the word peace in the verb to pacify and in the adjective peaceful. The Japanese language, without any combination and addition, in the ideogram 和 - wa indicates peace as a name, a verb, an adjective. And not only that. My old dictionary of ideograms, the Sumigawa Kanwachūjiten, first of all describes me from what ideas the ancient Chinese composed the ideogram 和 . The radical on the left, 禾 ,is the stylized image of the ear of rice that, as it matures, bends its head. The one on the right, 口, means the mouth. The combination of the two radicals evokes, therefore, the mouth that asks for food and gets it. Peace is, first of all, with - a gift of nature, of work and of social solidarity. It’s a gift of providence that guides the universe. We can recall a verse from Psalm 8:
"O Lord our God, how great is your name on all the earth: your magnificence rises above the heavens. With the mouth of children and infants you assert your power against your opponents, to silence enemies and rebels".
The infant’s power, which sucks milk, the psalmist says, silences enemies and rebels. Significant closeness between the biblical and Confucian traditions: the symbol of peace is not rendered by weapons, but by the mouth and ear, the mouth of the infant and the mother’s breast. My old vocabulary of ideograms says so his interpretation of 和 : This ideogram says the feeling of peace that two people feel when they approach their heart. Then it lists the many ways in which Japanese can understand the ideogram, depending on its placement in the text. Yawaragu, and means to soften. Yawaraka, and it means soft. Tairaka, and it means flat. Tairagu, and it means to make flat. Odayaka, and it means peaceful, calm. Atataka, and it means warm. Nagi, and it means calm. Also the same ideogram used in the names is sometimes read wa, but other times kazu, and so we have the very common names of Kazuko, Daughter of peace, and the male equivalent Kazuo or Kazuto, Son of Peace. The ideogram 和 combines with others and forms some of the most sacred words of human existence. 調 和, chōwa, which says harmony. 穏 和, onwa, which says warm calmness - benevolence, like that of Pope Francis. Especially I emphasize 平 和, Heiwa, which in the Japanese language is the official name of peace. The peace treaties drawn up by the greats of the earth often reflect the balance of power, so peace means the predominance of the strong and the subjugation of the weak. The peace obtained by war is not the juxtaposition of hearts, but the seed of future revolts of peoples defeated against their victors. Peace, 平 和 - Heiwa, is only real when it is simultaneously 調 和, chōwa, ie harmony. and 穏 和, onwa, ie warm calmness - benevolence. All peoples, both in the East and in the West, in their history have profaned peace by imposing it with weapons and through the shedding of blood. Cultures and religions too often have mystified the contrasts between human groups with their mutual excommunications, fomenting violent clashes between peoples. Peace, 平 和, Heiwa, is authentic when it is 調 和, chōwa, ie harmony. When it is 穏 和, onwa, ie warm calmness - benevolence. Whenever Nature and Man meet until the fusion of their essences, peace that is harmony and benevolence originates there. Nature produces the ears of rice, wheat and all the other food that nourish life. Man pours out the heartbeat and the light of thought. Thus, Nature and Man, together conceive art. When the painter draws on the table the sun that is born or that sets, simultaneously several authors cooperate in the same work of art. The man with his heart and his mind sees and personalizes the scene to be painted, the nature with the sun rising or setting told the man the image to be delineated, the color and the brush making possible the encounter between the painter and the natural scene. The author of every work of art, from painting to music, is always the concert between the human heart and natural elements. I would like to conclude this brief reflection with the image of hands united in veneration and prayer. The Japanese word for joined hands is 合 掌, gasshō. Recently I received the visit of bonzo Tatsusawa Nichikō, of the Nichiren school, who came from Japan to meet his son Kyōichi, student of opera singing in Milan and frequent attendant of our Japanese Sunday Mass. With the distinguished guest I visited Cardinal Tettamanzi who, after retiring from pastoral activity, resides in the Sacred Heart Spirituality Center in Triuggio. The bonzo presented the cardinal with a painting very dear to him, which depicts the joined hands of the man overlapping the silhouette of Fijiyama. The perfect conical shape of the mountain is harmoniously combined with hands of man in prayer. The bonzo added more or less these words: The Fujiyama is the joined hands of mother earth. We human beings learn from Fujiyama and together we join hands. Mother Earth and her children, that is, we men, we pray together. Cardinal Tettamanzi, pleased, added a characteristic evangelical nuance and said these words: One of the two hands is the one that gives, the other is the one that receives. Together they are the hands of love. In the paintings of my friend Giuseppe Siniscalchi I see the harmony of giving and receiving. According to occasions, the hands of giving and receiving are reversed, and the one he has given now receives, and the one he has received now gives. In giving, thanking for being able to give, and in receiving, thanking for being able to receive, there I see the peace, the ear and the mouth, the sucking child and the mother’s breast. The baby’s stomach fills and the breast empties. One day the baby will look after the elderly mother. 和.
Professor Gabriele Guglielmino
(professor, critic and art historian)
The silent and unceasing figurative wisdom
The commitment to review the complete work of Giuseppe Siniscalchi, while welcoming it with caution and respect, did not appear to me at the beginning so titanic as later, by going into the study of his painting, it then actually turned out. The same methodology, adopted to realize this critical contribution, is different from the custom that characterizes my writing activity. At first they seemed to me simply beautiful paintings, made by a sensitive person and attentive to detail. Honestly, I didn’t think that in order to acquire the necessary energy for this task, I should first dedicate myself to a phase of philological study on the one hand and spiritual preparation on the other. This is Giuseppe Siniscalchi and, considering my now ancient approach to art history - the beginnings of the university are now very far away - I had to take everything from the beginning, as if I were trying to understand paintings for the first time, recovering a lost child dimension in a remote time and in a happier age. I can assure you that it was worth it because, at a time when I thought I was providing a service,
I received a spiritual, delicate and harmonious benefit that provided me with a new key to understanding the world and human life. I have waited a lot for the realization of this task, in contravention of my good norms of respect for the established times, but such a reference was inevitable in order to get in tune not only with the work of Giuseppe Siniscalchi but with religious thought-philosophical that underlies it. It is better understood, in the light of what has been said, how the commitment to review an artistic production is all the more demanding as the personality of the person who created it is cultured, refined and rich in symbolic meanings. It is important that the viewer-user is informed in advance, contrary to what is said about the spontaneity of the vision, the need to provide some "straight" to observe the paintings, otherwise the inevitable consequence will be a beautiful visual review and nothing more. Giuseppe Siniscalchi is an artist lent to the lawyer, I would be tempted to call it a "late discovery of talent", in the sense that he decided to formalize this second activity only in recent years, however he had the ability to report the analytical and peculiar characteristics of his main profession in painting obtaining artistic and extra-artistic results worthy of great consideration. It is precisely this need for visual and cultural synthesis that moves the artist not to neglect anything of the work-object to to which he devotes himself, effortlessly crossing the edge of the canvas to continue the pictorial activity in the back usually defined by a verb-compositioniconic in which the visual subject is made explicit by a verbal message that stimulates even more the desire for knowledge of the observer involved. Thus, from the happy intuition of Giuseppe Siniscalchi, the term Fronteversismo was born to give a name to this way of proceeding that consists literally in painting both surfaces of the work, the front and the verse in fact. A term that, from the very first moments, has seemed so effective as to suggest scenarios much wider than the production, however appreciable, of a single artist as the possibility of giving life to a real cultural movement-artistic, religious-philosophical whose starting point is the realization of this catalog. I spoke voluntarily of work-object because the poetics of the Fronteversismo involves the work understood as an integral artistic product, inducing the user to obstinately seek the continuity of the subject or its completion in the back part, The one no one’s ever observed. Here lies the new way of the art travelled by our artist, called Fronteversismo, who with refined firmness leads us beyond the limits traditionally imposed by the frame - in his works definitively abolished - to give us that extra quid, in terms of beauty and knowledge, that you do not always catch at first glance. After weeks of fluctuating reflection on the works, I realized that his attempt is, for cultural ambition, not inferior to that made in the middle of the Renaissance, the Neoplatonic Academy of Marsilio Ficino at the court of Lorenzo il Magnifico in Florence, as in the capital of art it was attempted to reconcile two seemingly distant universes such as paganism and Christianity, trying to make them flow into the finished product of the work of art, Giuseppe Siniscalchi wants to achieve another form of reconciliation, equally cultural and spiritual, between Western and Eastern thought. At the beginning I spoke of a complete work because, although some works not relevant to the aims that have been proposed have been excluded, however it includes the different phases of the artist’s existence, from its earliest origins to the awareness of ardently desiring to engage in the pictorial activity, thus allowing the user to have before his eyes a long but at the same time heterogeneous excursus, selected to the extent necessary to the end to provide a catalogue-guide, that is, an itinerary that is easily walkable both on the artistic, chronological and evolutionary side and on the spiritual one that represents the added value present in the works. Giuseppe Siniscalchi waited a long time before opting for the publication of his artistic production but when he decided that the time had come, the pieces of the puzzle all came together in their place, returning us an integral artistic personality, in the sense that he offered all of himself in one solution. The stages of childhood, youth and subsequent maturity are found in the unique and unpublished version of this catalogue, placing the public in the condition to meditate on the process of a life that, however complex and without taking anything away from the journey accomplished, is reborn today in fatherhood and art, two experiences that probably, in a point of contact, reach the condition of unison. The small nucleus of the works of childhood was chosen voluntarily, beyond the artistic result that even in the childish dimension acquires a relevance, to sanction a departure, a sort of fairy-tale beginning that the artist will go to fish out in the meanders of memory and shelves once he becomes an adult, understanding only then, as often happens, the intrinsic physiological need to recover and make peace with their child pascoliano. From the drawing Children’s games in which traces of black scattered here and there alter the serenity of the subject represented, a symptom of how the inner sphere of children is always a microcosm difficult to probe for adults, to the composition, always childish, Landscape of fantasy, already affected by a certain artistic intentionality in the careful use of oil colors, we rediscover Giuseppe Siniscalchi child, although having known, most of us, in the fully mature age. We are surprised when, while remaining in this age, we come across the design Precarious balance of accumulation, the title is emblematic, in which a presumed tower of boxes, each with a secret to hide or reveal, rises to reach who knows what huge ego, typical of children in the process of defining their personality. We remain fascinated because we would hardly imagine, in the mind of a child, a capacity for visual synthesis about such a challenging philosophical concept. This phase constitutes the beginning from which a vocation began. Artists of international reach such as Paul Klee have made an artistic journey back to regain the spontaneity of childhood creativity while Giuseppe Siniscalchi has done more, in a simpler and more authentic way by undertaking a search for their school work. When we come to subjects like Dawn on the Lake or Dawn in the Mountains, the artist is A little more than twenty years old but these compositions have now reached the state of works and we begin to glimpse the characters that will form his linguistic koine that will be a formidable communicative tool to quietly attest to a spiritual growth. Within landscapes laid down in the softest serenity, a little man, probably the artist’s ego but symbol of all humanity, appears first decentralized and then at the center of the work, almost to sanction the slow but gradual belonging to the cosmos, of which there will always remain a religious respect. The element of nature will acquire an increasingly stable position in the works of Giuseppe Siniscalchi, passing from an initial representation of conflicting forces as in Vela between the forces of nature in which fire red makes the balance of the sailing vessel unstable and precarious, metaphor of human life to other works Starry Sky and Sunny Day in which nature, both adopting a blue echoing Van Gogh and the veils of an impressionist delicacy that refers to Monet, express the reconciliation of man with the deepest part of himself. After some works of the sign of those mentioned above, we come to two other entitled Bike and Abstract-happiness that could be closer to those of an artist-designer than a pure painter. Above all, the second still recalls the figure of the man who enlarges the arts in the gesture of the maximum expansion of himself in a stylized version that expresses the culmination of a joyful mood. Works take place in which the landscape, understood as a mystery that requires deep contemplation, seduces the the viewer’s gaze, almost a magnetic attraction that in an instant could definitively remove him from the world, the secular one, to catapult him into another, of a completely different nature, in which the material references are lacking and the soul represented by the sailing boat whose only motive energy is the wind, is pushed towards a destination constantly indicated by the sun on the horizon. The sea of Albertino is a perfect example for the concordance of an a-temporal dimension with those symbols, the boat and the sun, wrapped by an evanescent halo, that from this moment forward will constitute the happiest poetics of our artist. I think that in this phase Giuseppe Siniscalchi has developed the essence of his deepest research, which he defined as sun-wa or more synthetically wa to mean the graphic representation of a solar sphere where wa is the pronunciation of a Japanese graphic sign whose meaning refers to peace and solidarity. In the following production the sun with concentric rings derived from an expansion of its own energy, will be a recurring symbol, bearer of a religious philosophy tending to human brotherhood according to an admirable fusion between Western and Eastern thought. The state of grace obtained by such speculation we find it unequivocally in the two variants of the same subject, with the sun or with the moon, Japanese meditative woman who expresses with extreme delicacy the mutual influences between two cosmic entities, the woman and the sun-moon wa. Exemplar in this sense is Japanese country landscape in which, without altering the solemn simplicity of the painting, the artist makes join the Christian meaning of the cross that cuts the field, a sort of work accomplished by a heavenly plow, with the inevitable sun-He appears as a discreet supervisor of the whole. While admitting the explicit matrix of the Dutch master, at least present to a state of subconscious in the rural landscapes that are proposed to us, however it is an artistic reference completely transfigured in the conception wa up to obtain a result at the antipodes, We are so far from the dramatic tension of the last years of Vincent Van Gogh. Here, calm prevails as an absolute state, even when the darkness of the night falls, as in Meditation on a wheat field, where the point of intersection of the cross is close to the moon to definitively enshrine the transversality of faith. It almost borders on the sublime before the work Signs of peace in which the mystery of the moon-wa expands so much in the indecipherability of the night to be on the verge of flowing into it finding a landing place with no return. It regains the spontaneous simplicity in Lighthouse of peace through a delicate harmony of colors and a balance between the vertical of the lighthouse and the sea horizon, a work that is perhaps the manifest proof of how the aspiration to childhood can persist in adults free of any puerile fear. The work, which appears as the synthesis of a research carried out so far, is Cross and Wa at sunset in which the Concavity of a valley becomes the sweet cradle of a sun about to set that, illuminating an intense light but destined to remain for a while, is the aggregating fulcrum of a landscape under which a humble home is protected. At the end of this short review we want to point out the latest works, related to the current year that, probably more than the previous ones, represent the complete integration achieved between the front and the verse touching a lyricism imbued with a sweet nostalgia, almost heartbreaking. Peace under the stars is strongly evocative, the intensity of the lunar light illuminates a night landscape a day, country in which a man, finally at the center of his existence, no longer fears the relationship with the cosmos; Infinite Peace expresses the sense of infinity, a real shipwreck of Leopardiana memory, whose effect is achieved through the fusion of the last hills with a sky moved by a swirling celestial movement; Peace and nature symbolizes the perfect balance, wisely remarked by the circles in the field whose every man who observes the work could ideally place himself to enjoy a symbiosis with nature; Peace on wheat field, whose subject reminds us of others already proposed, acquires its undisputed originality thanks to a clearing of the palette that makes the work provided with a veiled and restful light; Peace in the desert corresponds to a further lightening of color, the soft and delicate color of the desert reminds us of the wonder of the sand dunes that we perceive as a physical extension of an increased inner peace; Peace by the sea, to be understood in its fullness, deserves more than the others the comparison with the version from back because, in the slope of the tones, the blue of the sea is makes more rarefied just like the memory of summer in our memory; Night of peace in Japan, the title is already emblematic, enshrines the mystery in the mystery thanks to the dynamic effect of the moon, whose rotating movement is clearly visible in the sky after being just completed, as if you wanted to see with the naked eye what is constantly happening. Finally, we do not want to leave out Sun-wa and mango whose title, disarming as the subject itself, reminds us, in case we forgot, that perfection is simple and is the only truth that never betrays. The works have been cited, perhaps, more than others, functional to define a particularly complex human and artistic path, in the full awareness that good will and the power of speech may not be enough when emotions in front of certain images, should remain unexpressed to avoid the risk of debasing them with comment or, even worse, with analysis. However, not being able to escape the task of cultural and artistic dissemination and wanting to extol the beauty of the spirit in the experience of the work of art, as emerges from the creations of Giuseppe Siniscalchi, We have fulfilled that commitment in the sincere hope that we have succeeded.
Dr. Nina Ansary (writer and activist)
ansaryIntervist of Myriam Defilippi
We are pleased to report some passages of the long interview that the editor of Donna Moderna Myriam Defilippi did to Nina Ansary, supporter of the fronteversismo.
The interview is reported in original English:
NINA ANSARY BIOGRAPHY
Nina Ansary is a scholar, historian, expert in the Women’s Movement in Iran and author of "Jewels of Allah, The Unspeakable History of Women in Iran".
She was born in Tehran and left her country when she was 12 years old at the beginning of the Islamic revolution. Raised in New York, she received her B.A. in sociology from Barnard College and her M.A. in Middle Eastern studies from Columbia University. In 2013 he finished his Ph. D in History at Columbia University.
She regularly collaborates with the Huffington Post and the Women’s enews website.
She is a member of the American Association of University Women, the National Women’s Organization, and the United Nations National Committee for Women, organizations dedicated to public policy and supporting education, charitable causes and gender. She is also one of the leading Iranian influencers on Twitter.
NINA ANSARY AND THE FRONTEVERSISM MOVEMENT
"I deeply admire Giuseppe Siniscalchi for his kindness, culture and enthusiasm. I am grateful to him for his special contribution to a world of peace. Through Fronteversismo, his artistic movement, he conveys a message of peace. And art becomes a colorful and universal language often more powerful than words themselves.
His paintings show us the relationship between the universe and human behavior. The hallmark of his philosophy is faith in dialogue and peaceful conflict resolution. Fronteversism has huge potential for peace".
ON NINA ANSARY’S BOOK
nina-ansary-revela-pressWhy did you choose to entitle your book Jewels of Allah?
“In researching the feminist movement in the West, I came across a quote by an American suffragist and feminist, Alice Stokes Paul, who described the women’s movement with these words: ‘I always fell that the women’s movement is a sort of mosaic in which each of us puts a little stone, then you get a great mosaic at the end’. The mosaic image inspired me. Iranian women have different perspectives and attitude, but at the same time they are united in the desire and effort to be free to follow their own path. Every woman is a unique gemstone and together they represent the jewels of our Creator, the jewels of Allah”.
What is the main aim of your book?
“It is a tribute to many powerful women throughout Iran’s history, revealing a global sisterhood of women who have transcended boundaries of religion, race and culture. It shatters some stereotypical assumptions about Iranian women and highlights the myriad of courageous women in Iran today who fight an uphill battle aimed at reversing the discriminatory gender policies. Jewels of Allah has broader borders and targets too: it is dedicated to every individual oppressed by discriminatory ideology”.
Do you think that feminism comes in different shapes and sizes?
“Every woman has the right to define the feminist mantra according to her own vision. She has to define feminism to her own cultural context. Nowadays many people criticize women wearing the veil. Personally I have nothing against it, if a highly educated and accomplished woman decide to put it on. However, it is not acceptable in case the veil is imposed to the woman by someone else and it is not the consequence of her own choice”.
Today women in Iran outnumber men in higher education, how did this happen, considering the phenomenon occurred after the 1979 revolution which imposed so many restrictions on women?
“This is one of the unanticipated consequences of measures undertaken by the Islamic regime, which ironically ended up empowering women. Ayatollah Khomeini in fact championed the cause of education for all, including women. With respect to higher education, in the early years of the revolution, women were banned from entering certain fields of studies. However, over the years, they gradually gained access and have a presence in virtually all disciplines. Imposition of the veil and the mandate for single-sex education at the primary and secondary levels was welcomed by the majority of the traditional families who could not relate to the westernized trend set in motion by the Pahlavi monarchy; those parents felt safe to send their daughters to school with such a chaste atmosphere”.
Looking at it from a humanitarian perspective, what do you think will be the consequences of the nuclear deal signed last July in Wien?
“The negotiations were not addressing women’s rights violations and other human rights concerns. However, sanctions have debilitated deeply and for years the Iranian population. I hope that if one door opens, then other doors will do the same. That is why I am cautiously optimistic that lifting the sanctions could potentially be the beginning of better things to come, including women’s rights and more freedom for Iranians in general”.
How can we in the West help Iranian women?
“The international community should engage in bringing attention to the plight of women in Iran who continue to be debilitated by the irrational premise of patriarchal laws. We all have the collective responsibility to amplify the voices of anyone or any group that has been unjustly oppressed. And the social media with their borderless nature can help us in this effort too”.
100%of all proceeds from the sale of her book Jewels of Allah go to various charitable organizations and institutions. The main recipient is the OMID Foundation, a charity that has been empowering disadvantaged young women in Iran for over a decade.
Paula Tooths
(Journalist, producer and author)
Brazilian, she was born in São Paulo, Brazil and lives in London where she founded TOOTHS Communication, which offers journalism services, executive production. She is also a book author (four publications in the UK), a journalist at Na Pauta online and worked as a motivator. In Twitter (@paulatooths) he has about 2 million followers. He works for editorial group and for news agencies such as "A Hora". As reference sites of the group we indicate: jornalahora.com; ahoraonline.com.br; napautaonline.com.br.
Roberto Zadik interviewed her about Fronteversismo:
What are your favorite paintings of Master Siniscalchi and can explain any impression or emotion in this regard?
I love Gius as an artist. His art, on the whole, is brilliant. He’s intense and full of soul. One of his works that I can highlight is Fronteversismo in Kimono because I see a lot in this. I don’t have a favorite style, but generally, images with soul capture my eyes.
One of his favorite paintings of Siniscalchi is "Flight of Peace", what is your opinion about religion and spirituality?
It’s a masterpiece. Rustic, natural, honest. It’s like a soul crying for peace. It’s full of feeling... it’s hard to really describe art, at least for me ... art is something to feel if it makes sense...
I saw his Twitter profile and I was surprised by the number of contacts, more than two million followers, what is the secret of his success?
There is no secret to this, but hard work for years.
I read that you are Brazilian living in London. Do you miss your country? What do you think of London? I wrote a book of stories about cities and fantasy stories, Soulcity 2.1- The soul of cities, and I am a big fan of the Beatles, Queen and Brit Pop like Bossa Nova, Vinicio De Moraes and Kaleidoscope. Do you have any favorite English or Brazilian musicians?
As you probably read, I was born in Brazil, but since I’m the daughter of an Italian family, I wouldn’t call Brazil "my country"
because it is very difficult about this as I grew up as a real Italian. I love London and this is the main reason why I’ve lived here for about two decades. I’m not a big Beatles fan but I love Queen and British Pop... but Brazilian popular music is not my teacup... I love Rock'n' Roll... Pink Floyd, Nirvana, REM, Smashing Pumpkins, Meatloaf... and it’s hard to pick just one. I also love Bon Jovi, U2, Cher, Vasco Rossi, Renato Zero.... I grew up listening to these too... Italian choices are probably influenced by my family and I often listened to them when I lived in Italy, as well as Fabrizio De Andrè or Jovanotti.
Maria Longo
(Doctor and dancer)
Giuseppe Siniscalchi and Mario Tantin
Tantin’s work depicts a man with his head bent over his hands folded and leaning against a stick in an undefined background of warm colors, the colors of the earth. Looks like sunset time. The man is tired and is immediately perceived by the position he assumes his body: he is fatigued, tired, exhausted and resigned to the idea of having to go on, overcome what every day he faces in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. I can imagine his face, wrinkles and closed eyes in this moment of recollection with himself.
The oil stain that you unknowingly generated in cleaning up the canvas clearly represents the profile of the protagonist of the painting. This profile, however, does not assume the same attitude of man in the flesh; the profile is high, the gaze is turned forward towards tomorrow, towards the future, and is proud, strong, ready to face any adversity. This is what the man in the painting cannot imagine... does not realize that it is his strong and proud soul to give him energy and determination to face life; he does not realize how strong it is and how many things he has managed to overcome and how many more he will overcome thanks to the strength and infinite energy of the soul of which is gifted. That soul is child, it is the pure, true, gritty and full soul of that man. The subject of this painting represents each of us who, pervaded by the tiredness that every day life brings us to try, forcing us to stressful rhythms and the self-sacrifice of our emotional self, we do not realize how strong we are, of what we are worth, and how much the power of the soul that guides us every day is oxygen and fuel of our efforts and dreams for which we fight. High eyes and bright, bright eyes... you should never forget them.
With your gesture on that painting you gave a new and extraordinarily positive sense to that work in perfect line with the philosophy of the artistic current you created.
Giuseppe Siniscalchi, Il “Peppi” (1964)
Mario Tantin, A sera (1964)
Lori Mixson
(marketing and communication expert)
Lori Mixson on the art of Siniscalchi
Interview by Roberto Zadik
Mixon
Some links on Lori Mixson
Mrs Mixson, what do you like about Giuseppe Siniscalchi’s paintings and what are your favorites among them?
I choose two of them, but I like them all: Full moon night in joetsu and Peace and Nature.
What do you appreciate about the movement "Fronteversismo" and what do you think about the role between image and communication in marketing and art?
First of all, allow me to express my satisfaction of having the privilege of being associated with such a unique and special character as Giuseppe Siniscalchi. I think the Fronteversism is a very original rebellion from the prevailing ideology at the moment. I would like people to have the opportunity to appreciate Giuseppe’s splendid work internationally. I believe that his brand, every masterpiece he has painted, is not marketable and deserves wider recognition worldwide.
Considering your social commitment do you think that art has a social role and what is the situation of painters and artists in America today?
I sincerely think that Giuseppe’s message is something global and his work deserves to be appreciated internationally. I feel that there is an American market suitable to expand and make known his masterpieces and I would like to see Giuseppe becoming a name recognized everywhere.
What are your favorite painters? What do you think of the importance that Sinsicalchi attributes in his paintings to his childhood, nature and landscapes? Many people wrote that he is comparable to the great Van Gogh, what do you think of this comparison?
I see in the art of Joseph a possible comparison with the great Vincent Van Gogh but he is endowed with his artistic language and I feel the uniqueness of his personality in his paintings that goes beyond any comparison. Joseph has a noble and romantic soul and is sincerely interested in the universe and the next. There is nothing more noble than wanting peace and love on a global scale. We all have to do what we can to combine our efforts in this direction and do what we can to do our utmost to make a difference. I am very happy to be included in this in any way, even with a small contribution.
Elena Aurelia Schmit
(doctor of medicine and surgery passionate about art and philosophy)
Fronteversismo : from the first moment I heard this word, echoed in my mind the thought of the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus: the harmony of opposites, a concept that encompasses the two universal sides of the coin. Just as in the Heraclite spirit, also in the Fronteversist reflection we find the harmonious union between light and darkness, fused in the embrace between the sweet sunset of the evening and the glow of the first lights of dawn, a prelude to a new day.
The philosophical message conveyed through art contains an extremely simple and current principle, namely the peaceful conjunction of diversity: peace.
This feeling is evoked by the brightness of the moon and the splendour of the sun strongly depicted in the paintings of Giuseppe Siniscalchi, an illuminated messenger of our times, conveying through his artistic language the beacon of peace and harmony.
Prof. Michele Murgese
Whatsapp Image 2021-01-22 at 19.06.41
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES:
Michele Murgese, graduated in AESTHETIC PHILOSOPHY.
He has published 25 books including Poems, Novels, Plays and Essays of Aesthetics.
He has ventured into Direction and Audiovisual Format.
Professor Onelio Onofrio Francioso
(journalist, writer, sociologist, jurist)
The computable force of the immeasurable spirit
Suddenly fate has allowed me to find myself in a contemplative state in front of the painting of Giuseppe Siniscalchi. There I think I have identified the answer to questions that have haunted me since, as an instinctive user, enchanted I approached the works of artists. I always wondered: what is Art, who is the Artist? So I listened to many professors and many illustrious experts. The premise from which I do not depart is linked to the "Memoirs" of the Sun King written for the Dauphin of France, where it is advisable not to trust too many experts and eminent people. Especially in the current historical context, I never forget that convincing reading, although I am not the Dauphin of France, despite the similarity of my surname. So, sometimes, the human mind and spirit could reveal joy in the answers or explanations that anyone could offer to himself, without the help of third parties. And we are already all too automatically conditioned by everything around us, as if crushed to the ground brutally and gratuitously. We avoid the powerless burial. With these presuppositions I come to express the gentle effect that originated in me the observation, first spontaneous and then more careful, of the artistic works of Joseph. With my humble heart, as a passionate researcher of aesthetic emotions, the conceptual definition of artist I would begin not to limit it, making the mistake of confusing it with a "modus vivendi" of a human subject "unusual" or eccentrically pseudo-original. Instead, I would identify it with that capacity of a sensitive being who cannot be restrained when lightning strikes in the mind a generating force that illuminates itself. That flash inexorably pulling us towards the material realization of what will be fruitful in becoming a work of art, ecstatic. What is Art? Pausing before the works of Joseph, I realize that each of it, wanting to imagine it placed in any chronological time, would be appreciably understood, because it is usable in a "timeless" reality. Admitting however that I should not ignore that fascinating element that quantum physics calls "arrow of time". In Giuseppe’s work I notice a trait that already focused on a graphic-emotional manifestation of an archaic perception of the most remote era. Where, through the will of observation, it was shown that in earthly existence the characterizing evolutionary sensitivity is never confused with the differentiations, in the communicative form, between all the beings present in the mysterious creation contiguous to the human. The prehistoric graffiti testify the very distinct creative faculty , realized for the causality the attention of a genuine spirit, which could only be gushing from curiosity full of a brilliant candor open to life. Here are the first elements that invade my eyes that observe. The work of Joseph captures and carries in a frank genuineness of a simple spirit, candid, sincere, nostalgically proactive. A spirit moved by his own feelings, that expand for a permanent witness, so that it remains as a pedagogical act, transmitted by the primordial unconscious, explicit a desire to communicate how emotions can also exist arising from elementary purity, repealing the polluting forces of the looming evil hidden by the current complexity now irrepressible. The Art I would not judge in function of an operating technique, but it is deduced imperative from a choice of a technique that can be faithful to the emotion that has promoted it. In the centuries of the history of the art the techniques evolve, they are experimented, but they are relative also to some attempts that sometimes I would only collide with the innate dissatisfactions and of sad effects. Attempts unfortunately accepted and also praised as art. Those attempts appreciated commercially by a social reality that, even among connoisseurs, is increasingly unsuitable to grasp the essence of art itself. Various reasons, including the irreflexive frivolity of the living age. Art is exchanged in the synallagmatic condition of the most artificial existences of today, which can be explained dialectically with that intellectual tool that was in the fervid medieval intuition the "principiumindividuationis". The artist Giuseppe Siniscalchi is outside of any polluting-impregnating scheme. His work lives as a testimony that divine immanence can make it possible to proclaim with the essential creative emotion, the multiple principles that merge the objective presences elaborated by the human being, together with the subjective presence that only the Divine can give in the universal order. An order that must be understood in his message full of mere serenity. Joseph appears as the spontaneous artist who seeks the simple but mysterious Divine order, alien to the complications that we humans project into everyday reality, thus deceiving us to imitate, or replace, the will of the Eternal. In the traits and colors used by Joseph I discern instead that respect for the Eternal, as if he wanted in every touch of art to thank eternity, which in that moment is allowing him to leave evidence of intense emotions lived, collections, ordered, with the potential to offer already today a nostalgia for the future that will come. The symbolism of Joseph’s art I perceive as an act of subsumption that transmutes itself as a genuine human being, recovering in a limited space of a canvas, that becomes universal and unlimited pulsating. Some of his works would be a crime to frame them, because transhipments in search of the infinite. But above all the In the observed works, the themes dealt with by Our artist explain a desire to immortalize the desired stillness. And the quiet is the choice that seems to be highlighted in the reality strongly desired, as if it were a spirit of a samurai, with the forged sword of sugar, that over time has wandered into infinity, to finally come to propose a message of sovereign peace. So that the sufferings observed may cease. Art is accessible without barriers in time. It’s the simplicity of touching anyone’s heart, mind, soul. It’s the desire to bring joy to the intellect, even when it represents complex or difficult issues. Art is the gift of messages of invitation to reflections without offending anyone. The offensive work of art cannot be considered Art! It is the thanksgiving of humility that respects sacredness. It’s the desire for a speck of human dust that aspires to leave a mark of love for eternal life. All this for me is Art. And if it were so only for me and not for others, however, it will be necessary to admit that the inscrutable Immense, as if it were a magic, has allowed me now to think these concepts that someone is reading in these fleeting moments. And if I wrote these inspired reflections it is thanks to the art of Joseph. Without him I probably, lazily, would never have expressed them. Art is therefore a stimulus of love for life, which in a fraction of a second can immortalize the infinite making it actuative, as if it were a dream reality that is reflected in a concrete mirror, even if always delicately fragile. And because I believe that the human mind is an algorithm of inhibited teleological ontogeny, I think that only in art does the human redeem himself. Art is the computable Force of the immeasurable Spirit. These opinions come from a humble mortal being, but the passion for Art I believe can ennoble our fragile humanity, saving us.
