Inchiostro e Saggezza
I thought the work of art was an outburst, nerves, improvisation;
now I realize that it’s patience: doing again, hearing again, being again.
Arturo Martini
This series of pictures is the result of several mornings and afternoons spent in the laboratory of Via Fara where, for years, the historical printing house of Giorgio Upiglio has had its headquarters; established in 1962, it was since the beginning a meeting place for the Italian artistic avant-gard. Giorgio Upiglio, considered one of the best printmakers in Europe, starts his apprenticeship at 13 and in 1950, just 18, he purchases his first press. He quits nearly immediately editorial and commercial graphics committing only to art prints, manufacturing engravings by De Chirico, Fontana, Giò and Arnaldo Pomodoro, and art books for Duchamp, Man Ray, Mirò, Giacometti, Calder, César, Paladino. With many of these artists he not only collaborates, but is also an accomplice, a friend and a fellow traveller
The laboratory is a place that makes you feel uncomfortable, but at the same time infuses deep tranquillity: in the air one grasps Radio3 classical music concerts and the smell of inks, solvents and humid paper. It’s a place that’s hard to fully embrace at first, at least this was my feeling. I had to get acquainted starting from the small things: the tools and the working boards, the archive, the geometric rows of folders. Then the handwork, and the numerous rites to be performed always in the same way, with no hurry. Because engraving is a technique that requires patience, the acceptance of times imposed by chemical processes supposes that mankind has limitations, the extreme precision of handwork is a skill which comes after years of practice. Maybe engraving is a technique that makes man wise.
Giorgio Upiglio is a reserved and sober man, a landlord with a true sense of hospitality that has made his laboratory a unique place. You can feel that many people have passed by this place, spending important time, days and nights smoking, working, talking. Encounters that have left traces of a creative and living energy you can still breathe. Giorgio Upiglio is most importantly a man from Milan, one of those with great humanity and ethical coherence, with an idea of duty and of pleasure of doing things which gives meaning to the little acts of an everyday job: the printmaker’s job or the job of living.
