Sicioldr | Dipinti | July 2021

The MUSAS presents

DIPINTI
solo exhibition of
SICIOLDR

made possible by
Santarcangelo di Romagna Town Hall, Emilia Romagna Region, The Tonino Guerra Cultural Association

Curated by RvB Arts, Rome

Introduction by Massimo Pulini

Organised by Fo.Cu.S. (Santarcangelo Culture Foundation)

Dipinti is the first solo museum exhibition of young Italian artist Alessandro Sicioldr. Born in 1990 in Tarquinia, Sicioldr has generated international interest with his haunting, visionary artwork and remarkable technical skills.

Sicioldr opens the door to the exploration of the imagination and the unconscious, questioning the concept of an impassable boundary and an unfathomable limit: crossing them, one enters a parallel dimension animated by symbolic, archetypal creatures.

A patch of red, a sea of black, an oval face of an opalescent pallor – Sicioldr’s colours seem to pierce the walls. But the chromatic aspect is almost a decorative device, albeit one that is masterfully applied by force of patient glazes. Instead the heart of the work lies in the iconographic component, which ranges from complex compositions populated by mythological figures to paintings with simple elongated figures clothed in a mystical air.

Many of the cultural references that appear to be evident in Sicioldr’s work are spread over several centuries and traditions – from the hellish bedlam of Bosch to the follies and ghosts of Grünewald; from a Flemish sensibility in the rendering of light, to Böcklin’s suspended and evocative atmospheres, the dreamlike compositions of Redon, and the poetic, psychoanalytical visions and inventions of Ernst. Sicioldr freely mixes and re-elaborates influences from different currents, such as symbolism and surrealism, cloaking them with an aura that is medieval, archaic and in some ways primitive.

But these references carry no precise message; instead Sicioldr’s images emanate from the imagination and the whims of a fertile subconscious. His paintings, like dreams, lend themselves to different interpretations, depending on the sensitivity of the observer. Whatever the reaction, no-one can remain untouched by these creatures: the artist seems to exhort us to take a position, to “feel” his work, which is nothing less than Sicioldr’s unconscious, filtered and sublimated through painting.

Sicioldr began drawing and painting under the guidance of his father, himself a noted artist. A fascination with pigments and painting-supports led Sicioldr to Cennino Cennini’s Il Libro dell’Arte (The Craftsman’s Handbook), the famous guide to 15th-century methods of painting and the great masters’ secrets and techniques, subsequently adopted by Sicioldr in his own work.

Dipinti is part of a series of events being held in Santarcangelo di Romagna in connection with the Luoghi dell’Anima (Places of the Soul) – Italian Film Festival, which was created to mark the centenary of the birth of famed writer, poet and screenplay writer Tonino Guerra.