Old presses

I have visited Savelli's atelier
Author: Arturo Peyrot

08 October 1941

Savelli's atelier in Via Margutta is small, too small, opening directly onto the street.

In a way Savelli was expecting my visit, for he knows that, despite his youth, he is not the least of painters; rather he is among the young men who aspire to success sooner or later, and one of those who is better equipped for this game.

Also, Savelli is deservedly one of the winners of the Bergamo Prize. In fact, among the young painters in Rome, he is not just one of the most promising, but one of those who graduated from being "hopes" to "fulfilled promises"; he has already shown he possesses true talent and also a unique personality, culture and intelligence: all that is needed, together with constancy, assiduous work and inspiration, to become a complete artist.

Do you think, I ask him, that the work of the artist should be incessant, or limited to the moments of so-called inspiration?

"I think that working for art, and in this case for painting, must be relentless to the point of delirium; not to translate it into routine work, common to all men, but to refine intuitive and creative abilities, to focus sensibility, and thus to grasp the state of grace when we fall into it unconsciously."

"I shall note, for those who are not familiar with art, that I am not only referring to physical work, but to that intimate and deep preparation which allows us to convey the emotions we receive from life, in a sincere, transfiguring and poetic form. My few works show it clearly."

Why, I ask him, this predilection for broken dolls and puppets in your pictures?

"I love broken and bedraggled dolls that children abandon by the roadside; when I find them by chance I try to fix them in my imagination, and often I take them to my atelier: the most privileged have been keeping me good company for years. Others, instead, real dolls, like certain skirts and trousers walking down the streets, end up badly, because sooner or later I throw them against the wall or dump them out of the window."

"I have one, all mangled, taken from three boys who were fighting over it and had reduced it to a rag; I have seen real women turned to rags too, but I have not had as much sympathy for them as for that almond-eyed doll who now stays with me: she has a small mouth and a graceful curl in her upper lip; her hair is the colour of the morning sun; she is almost bare, with a simple shift of pale pink."

"Sometimes I have borrowed colours from masks, too, and even my pained and twisted figures have a distant resemblance."

"What are my preferences in painting? I love vivid colours, loud and meaty, shadowy and deep, like the stormy sea in the Gulf of Santa Eufemia; I remember that I had my first sensations of joy of colour in that place: my head could not pass through the iron rail of my balcony and so I placed it between the rungs and watched untiringly."

"I love dark and frightening tones, like Stromboli booming in a windy day – or tender and idyllic like the colour of a wall that saw my birth."

Author: Arturo Peyrot

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