Por: Denise Mattar
The Essential Passion
My look is clear like a sunflower.
I have the habit of walking the roads
Looking to the right and to the left,
And from time to time looking back …
And what I see every moment
is what I had never seen before,
And I know how to take it very well …
I know the essential amazement
What does a child have if, at birth,
I noticed you were born …
I feel born every moment
For the eternal novelty of the World
Alberto Caeiro
At first, Pietrina looked at her body. She looked at every part of him as if it were a novelty, to be understood, smelled, felt, licked. The artist’s brush stroked textures, curves and folds creating strange landscapes, full of sensuality, and paradoxically cold, in the strangeness of the astonishment.
In 1969, about this stage of the artist, the critic Roberto Pontual, in his poetic style, capable of reaching the work of the artists so deeply, said:
(…) using “closes” and perspectives of deliberate contortion, with the exact and non-stiff grip of the apprehension of anatomy, Pietrina manages to direct our initial glance to the heart of his denunciation… The evidence of the world of no more, of the tranquility and beauty rendered impossible, the languid atmosphere of being able to dream and contemplate, the peace that lies in the texture of one’s own skin or the essential risk of a closed look at the world, the cornucopia of magic and the softening floral elements, in the music spelling counterpoint. However – and this is where the greater density of her painting resides and vibrates – no nostalgia … Pietrina, in her lucid experience of contemporaneity, understands why this peace she paints no longer corresponds to the world of our daily step.
Today, the artist’s look, “crisp like a sunflower,” lucidly explores the rose. It feels its carnal texture, velvety, silky, satin. It reveals that a single color is swallowed by nuances that are glimpsed. He surrenders to the embrace of the many petals that embrace; in a delirium of sensuality that creates women-flower. It is a journey through familiar and strange colors and forms, and what we see, at every moment, is what we always see, but which we had never seen before …
And in the vertigo of beauty, with the same look of astonishment, Pietrina finds the thorn. But he, who is also pink, does not allow himself to be touched, smelled and licked; demands to be looked at from a distance. The apprehension has to be made cautiously, and its invading, hard and dark nature grows, expands, entwines, suffocates. It is the counterpoint revealing its claws, and bringing its heirs, strange figures, ready to sting their little teeth in us.
Alberto Caeiro ends his poem saying that he has no philosophy, has senses, that thinking is not understanding, and that the only innocence is not thinking. The work of Pietrina materializes this innocent and curious look, precise without being scientific, and full of charm by the eternal novelty of the World.
Far from surrealism, Pietrina Checcacci is a pop artist, who makes an apology for life, because her look knew how to keep the essential amazement.
Denise Mattar Curator 2007
