(Fabriano 1929–2008 Trevi)
Arco a sesto ribassato con ombra, 1969, bricks, cement, 240 x 100 x 22 cm, (MCC)

Watch Video: Contemporary Art | November 2015 | Giuseppe Uncini and Fausto Melotti
Watch Video: Contemporary Art | November 2015 | Italian Contemporary Art

Provenance:
Liceo Artistico “Enzo Rossi”, Rome

Literature:
Bruno Corà, Uncini, catalogue raisonné, p. 259, no. 69 – 010 with ill.

As a teenager, Giuseppe Uncini attended the Art Institute of Urbino. Since 1960, he worked as a professor in similar schools, first at the “Roma 1” National Institute for Fine Arts and subsequently, from 1966 onwards, at the “Roma 2” National Institute for Fine Arts, Decorative Arts and Religious Furnishings (which is currently the “Liceo Artistico Enzo Rossi”).
At the latter, he taught until his retirement in 1988.
In 1970, the principal of the Roma 2 Institute, the painter Enzo Rossi, was already considering Uncini for tenure, and wrote about him to the Ministry of Public Education: “Professor Uncini is a renowned artist and his great maturity is the foundation on which the learning material for the whole section he supervises is based. He is held in high esteem by both students and colleagues (…); as a teacher and experimenter he goes well beyond the limits set by his work hours and his teaching duties”.
We know for a fact that Uncini made ample use of the spacious school laboratories, where he created some of his finest works, and worked with students for several years on characters for the school Christmas performances that were completely new and unique. Those were the years of student protest and many artists were reaching out to the harsh realities of the outer suburbs of Rome in a revolutionary act that was bound to spur unexpected results. Uncini was teaching professional design, metalcrafting and goldsmithing, as well creating extraordinary jewels, while his colleagues were working with students on liturgical items, drawing inspiration from the most innovative trends in contemporary art.
Since 1958, Uncini’s artistic production included his famous artworks in reinforced concrete, which often had metallic elements and visible signs of their wooden frames; after 1968, however, the artist began to focus on the function of shadows and, between 1969 and 1972, Uncini also created artworks with bricks. The present work was indeed produced between those two stages: it combines a meditation on shadows and an execution with bricks, and it marks a fundamental period in the history of the artist. Marisa Volpi Orlandini, among others, correctly interprets this period in her essay, “Giuseppe Uncini-The Shadows”, which appeared in issue #4 of the “Rondanini” magazine in April 1976. Gillo Dorfles discusses it in “The Shadows of Giuseppe Uncini” in “Studio Marconi” on 31 March 1976.
In both articles the two critics precisely focus on the depiction of “cast shadows” in Renaissance Art from Central Italy and on the “optical illusions” stemming from that great Italian artistic period that Uncini was reinterpreting. Yet this work is also reminiscent of ancient Roman architecture, with its walls, columns, pilasters and archways. In particular, for a series of contiguous works, Uncini spoke of a “Tiberian Cloaca Maxima with shadows” that harks back to the celebrated monumental presence of architecture and civil engineering in Ancient Rome.
In a recent interview about this artwork, an old former employee of the Tiburtino III School recalled: “Uncini used to call this piece the ‘Tiberian Cloaca Maxima with its shadow’. He used to work at the school laboratories and I remember that, whenever he was getting ready for some exhibition, huge trucks with a lot of workers would come, and they would wrap his works with covers in order to protect them. Uncini would often write the name or price on the back of the piece. This one was originally positioned at the entrance of the school, in the hall. He presented it to the school as a gift; I remember him as a deeply humble man, he was always convinced that his pieces would not be bought, even when he was already very famous. He was an aristocratic soul. He chose to leave this piece of art with the school because, unlike other pieces belonging to the same series, this one did not have a base, and it was necessary to hang it on a wall. I was helping him, during those years, to make the concrete, we pointed spotlights at the piece, generating a shadow, and on that shadow Uncini himself would make his interventions. I clearly remember the work we had to do to create the archway with bricks: they are not full bricks, it is a curtain, but they are glued so that they create the arch. The internal structure is made with timber, then the concrete does the rest.” Volpi Orlandini was among the first to refer to this series of works as an illusion generated by full spaces that look empty, the shifting effects caused by the light when it hits them, flattening or highlighting some of its parts. She maintained that such pieces, when admired indoors, give the impression of being encrusted forms, a sensation they still elicit today. It is an ineffable fascination that becomes all the more irresistible thanks to the mixture of simple construction materials and their rebirth through the unmistakeable touch of poetry.
Daniela de Angelis