Osvaldo Licini

Collezione Emilio Jesi, Milano
Galerie Marie Louise Jeanneret, Parigi
Galleria Apollinaire, Milano

Venezia, XXIX Biennale Internazionale d'Arte, 1958, n. 183

Giuseppe Marchiori, I cieli di Osvaldo Licini, Venezia 1968, n. LXXX, illustrato

This work appears to be in generally good overall condition.The work is relined. There are few light scattered threadlike and stable craquelures. There is an indentation mark with tiny losses towards the center of the painting. There are some tiny losses by the lower right corner and along the left edge. There is a dirt trace near the head of the Angel. Under UV light are visible some pin-pointed retouching by the upper corners.
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Come le male–assunte, anche gli Angeli ribelli uniscono in sé celestialità ed eresia, anche se all’idea di ascesa si sostituisce in essi quella di caduta. Il demone già adombrato nell’Olandese Volante rappresenta per Licini l’uomo stesso, o meglio una sorta di oltre-uomo nietzscheano: l’uomo che è giunto a trascendersi, a rovesciare tutti i valori, e trova l’unico valore nel dubbio. “Che cos’è l’uomo? Mi rincresce, ma nemmeno Nietzsche ha saputo rispondere a questa domanda. Vivere, allora, andare al di là di noi stessi, trascendersi. Ecco perché ancora viviamo, con questa speranza”, scrive l’artista a Marchiori nel 1943. Per trovare le ascendenze di queste creature fantastiche, oltre che alla letteratura sugli angeli, bisognerebbe risalire a quella sui demoni, che affonda le radici nel romanticismo, dai Masnadieri di Schiller al patto col diavolo del Faust. Gli Angeli ribelli, però, non hanno nulla di morboso, di titanico, di decadente. Più farseschi che drammatici, esprimono non la terribilità, ma l’inevitabilità del negativo. Nella visione di Licini il male non è una colpa, perché è connaturato all’uomo. 

Like the male-assunte, also the Angeli ribelli (Rebel angels) unite in themselves holy and heresy, even if the idea of ascent is replaced in them by that of fall. The demon already adumbrated in the Olandese Volante (Flying Dutch) represents for Licini man himself, or better a sort of Nietzschean over-man: the man who has come to transcend himself, to overthrow all the values, and finds the one and only value in doubt. “What is man? I regret, but even Nietzsche was unable to respond to this question. To live, then, to go beyond ourselves, transcend oneself. That’s why we still live, with this hope”, writes the artist to Marchiori in 1943. To find the ascendancies of these fantastic creatures, in addition to the literature on angels, one should go back to that on demons, which has its roots in Romanticism, from Masnadieri by Schiller to the deal with the devil by Faust. The Angeli ribelli (Rebel angels), however, have nothing of morbid, of titanic, of decadent. More farcical than dramatic, they express not the dreadfulness, but the inevitability of the negative. In the vision of Licini, the evil is not a sin, because it is ingrained in man.

Elena Pontiggia, tratto da “Filosofia di Licini” in “Osvaldo Licini – Tra le Marche e l’Europa”, Cinisello Balsamo 2008