At some point in his life, the architect Marcello Pietrantoni (who, moreover, had never abandoned the visual arts) ideally associated the structural study of a building with a sculpture capable of transferring the sense of myth and ritual to our days. He went to recover the most distant roots of our cultural essence to transplant them into a critical allegory that concerns us closely. But what relationship can exist, for example, between the design of a bank and a figure that seems generated by the night of time to plunge into our accelerated becoming? This can be seen, first of all, in a sequence di disegni caratterizzati da un approccio informale, ripetuto sulla carta, per elaborare un progetto ancora celato nel pensiero che approderà, infine, a una parvenza d’immagine, ovvero a una rivelazione. Le sue sculture contrastano l’instabilità e la velocità di trasformazione che caratterizza la nostra epoca, la quale sembra ignorare, o dimenticare, il significato di quella memoria tramandata dai cromosomi di ciascuno. E Giustiziere, un bronzo del ‘72, ne è, intanto, una singolare prova attraverso la brutalità di un personaggio plastico di matrice preclassica che si fa gesto, senza offrire un volto di riconoscimento.
Un impatto anche visivamente of drawings characterized by an informal approach, repeated on paper, to elaborate a project still hidden in thought that will eventually arrive at a semblance of image, or a revelation.
IN HIS WORK, MYSTERIOUS ENTITIES FROM THE ABYSS OF THE SOUL AND ARCHAIC WORLDS
His sculptures contrast the instability and the speed of transformation that characterizes our time, which seems to ignore, or forget, the meaning of that memory handed down from the chromosomes of each. And Giustiziere, a bronze of 1972, is, in the meantime, a singular proof through the brutality of a plastic character of a preclassic matrix that makes gestures, without offering a face of recognition.
STRANGE APPARITIONS OF MYTHICAL CREATURES OF WHICH WE KNOW NOTHING, BUT THAT WILL REVEAL EVERYTHING AT A PURE GLANCE
An impact also visually traumatic that is renewed in the Primo auriga of 1989, in the impassibility of that enigmatic face ready to project the body beyond any temporal subdivision: It captures us in its transit and drags us into mystery. Similar research is renewed with Raffaella of 1994, in the elongated and mutilated exhibition of a body precipitated to us by an ancestral world, ready to mirror the doubts that have always belonged to man, as a gift or as a condemnation, and that, now as then, is not able to decipher or solve.
WITH SUCH IMPENETRABLE ENTITIES, THE ARTIST QUESTIONS A DESTINY THAT COMES FROM THE DAWN OF THE TIME
With such impenetrable entities, Pietrantoni does not offer salvific solutions, but questions a destiny that comes from the dawn of time. These too are architectures that are linked to the evolution of history, sculptures similar to buildings that refer to eternity, where we encounter sacred presences to indicate stages of a possible destination. Starting from here, the creations that bloom in the following years bring further elements of construction and rupture delivered to our gaze ambiguously and deeply involved. The commitment and the sacred fear of recognizing us in the metamorphosis of Cristina grows, in the brutal march of Flor in 2011, or in the tormented contortions of Mime Repente. A similar state of mind also emerges in the presence of the fierce transformation of a Sagrada in 2013, with an unexpected angelic face, before arriving at the stricken nakedness of the God of the wood, realized in 2014.
SCULPTURES THAT REFER TO THE ETERNAL WHERE WE MEET SACRED PRESENCES TO INDICATE A POSSIBLE WAY
So for Marcello Pietrantoni - a person, among other things, from the vast classical culture - the religious maxim inscribed in the temple of Apollo in Delphi, “know yourself”, becomes a journey together individual and universal. An exploration into the depths of the soul and the world of the primordial that this suggests. From his hands and his mind, arcane creatures come out of whom we know nothing, but who - we are sure - at a pure glance will reveal everything.
