Wilde&Korallo

Wilde & Korallo| 2000

Dario Ersetti presents Wilde & Korallo

Foreword

Dario Ersetti

"I'm dying beyond my means." So OscarWilde, on November 30, 1900, sipping his last glass of champagne. Why this publication on Oscar Wilde and Giovanni Korallo after a hundred years? When I saw Giovanni Korallo's paintings for the first time, I had the sensation of having seen them before. Korallo's figures certainly recall other figures by other painters. But they are different. Males are swollen and impetuous almost like Bay males. Almost. Females, some females, are as fat as Botero females. But they are different women. Where then did I see images similar to those of Korallo? And then it occurred to me. Not painters but poets, indeed, poet, indeed, Oscar Wilde. Wilde with pictures of him ... the vermilion mouth ... the silver doves ... the yellow sheaves ... the green grass .... Wilde described Korallo's paintings. Not the other. Korallo doesn't know Wilde as Wilde doesn't know Korallo. It's a kind of halfway meeting, where road has the meaning we want to give it.

Introduction

Bernard Hickey

Professor Bernard Hickey AM, and Director of the Observatory on Diasporas, Cultures and Institutions of Overseas Countries, Full Professor of English Language and Literature, Director of the Section of Australian Studies at the University of Lecce.

When we think of Oscar Wilde's lifelong testimony to aesthetic values, we feel the presence of an informing spirit that enlivens every object on which we look. And the same thing happens for the selection made by Dario Ersetti of Wilde's poems and his choice to associate with them paintings by Giovanni Korallo, which has come down to us thanks to the enlightened generosity of Ottica Rucco, Lecce. In his preface Dario Ersetti tells us about his emotions, guiding us to see Giovanni Korallo's paintings in their right place. Wilde, in his best epigrammatic way, as if it were an oxymoron, once said that "nature follows art". With this expression he referred to the fact that when an artist paints the nature, sensitivity and technique of him allow him to present various aspects of nature that no ordinary person would ever notice. I can say that, in this fascinating publication, the art of Giovanni Korallo follows Dario Ersetti. He is our guide, that links the visual to the verbal, the extraordinary paintings to Wilde's most refined poetry. This attractive little book reveals many of Wilde's attitudes to her circumstances led us to ignore. The author of this anthology, with his personal choices, the fruit of his sensitivity, revealed, in my opinion, just how Wilde embodied the contradictory genius of the Anglo-Irish group of English origin, for several centuries the ruling class in Ireland As Professor A. Norman Jeffares noted in the Encyclopaedia of Ireland (1968), Wilde was the successor of the great playwrights Anglo-Irish - Congreve, Goldsmith and Sheridan - who had made themselves a name in London in the 1700s. They too had to live off theirs talent and adapt their ingenuity to the general social context. They knew the art and craft of oratory to perfection. The irony, making fun of themselves and others marked theirs style. They were skilled in conversation, analyzing it, repeating it in their works with an accuracy that was both deadly and delightful. The rhythm of their characters' speech, the "copia verborum" stemmed from their paradoxical position in a singular society. The Anglo-Irish, belonging to this class, were deeply attached to Ireland (just as Oscar Wilde was to England), yet they (and he) could boast of being completely different from those they served but didn't always love. And one hundred years after his death in Paris, November 30, 1900, thanks to a precise choice and the combination of art and humanity that for us they are a gift of poetry, painting, selection and generosity, we have enriched ourselves, and, in a positive, constructive way, we are remembering and learning from Oscar Wilde's earthly pilgrimage.

Information:

Nation of Exhibition: Italy

City of Exhibition: Lecce

Place of Exhibition: Carlo Castle V

Subsequent exhibitions

Gallery

Artistic criticism

Isabella Galmarini

" It is still lying on the suspended table ... I have looked and gazed at those few pages countless times. Wilde & Korallo. What is there in that play on words and figures, in that abundance of signs and colors? The symbolic truth can only be understood intuitively but when it appears it illuminates the whole being ... "

Isabella Galmarini

It is still lying on the suspended table ... I have looked and gazed at those few pages countless times. Wilde & Korallo. What is there in that play on words and figures, in that abundance of signs and colors? The symbolic truth can only be understood intuitively but when it appears it illuminates the whole being. Nothing. I want to see beyond that chaotic world where men, trees, animals, objects merge and take on the same meaning but my eyes are enchanted by the serenity of those proud female faces, those lonely and haughty queens. I lose myself in those big hands of opulent bodies but I don't penetrate them. Nothing. They look at me. Figures present, powerful, prosperous, full of color, carnal but at the same time elusive, unreal, of other times. As you come out of a dream for a moment to indulge, aware. Just for a moment. Nothing is linear yet so defined. Passively everything mixes up to confuse. Yet present, masks of our emotions, sad boundless creatures in a veiled, unreal world. The soul is dead, it got lost to be transformed into form, into pure form. I shy away from interpretations preferring to simply let myself sink into the subtle beauty of the painting.