What leads an architect and good designer to express himself through a “primitive” art of extreme technical and expressive synthesis? This is the fascinating mystery of the still animal and instinctive area of the human mind, the one free from the binders of conventions. In Raffaele’sworks, if you want, you can see crazy colours and brushstrokesat Van Gogh or expressive naivetyat Gaugin or inexplicable interpretations of reality at Cezanne and then whynot Mirò, Matisse, Modigliani …The pat his probably the well-known one, narrated by famous artistic events, where the instinct led Unknown Artists to radically detach themselves from the aesthetic conventions of the moment, although largely within the reach of their technical abilities, to place themselves out of the choir where their genius and animal instinct overwhelmingly carried them and wanted them. They are often stories of poverty, despair, sickness, loneliness. But the allure of artisticexpressionisallhere. Genius hasalwaysbeen to be soughtbetween the pages of rejection, the improbable, the immoral and the ridiculous. Raffaele, given the proper proportions, probably belongs to this array, look athisworks in detail, you will certainly understand the “how” but will remain extraordinarily unanswered the “why”-
ANTONIO RICCIARDI
Roma, May 2010
Raffaele Ripoli is an architect, designer, painter, all-round artist, whose innate talent for drawing already alive since the early years of childhood has never ceased to exist and accompany every experience of life and everyjourney, because it is instilled in always of “designedtrips” for Raffaele, from the first years spent in Scigliano, the Calabrian village in the area of the Presila where he wasborn, until the choice to study architecture in Florence where he graduated and then to travel again to Northern Europe, settling for a long time in the Netherlands, in the city of Amsterdam, working as an architect, then returning back to Calabria where he continued to be an Architect and opened a Bed and Breakfast to which he still dedicateshimself with great enthusiasm during the tourist season as a confident promoter of the “beautiful” of itsmuch-lovedregion, untilitscurrent transfer to the province of Rome where it teaches Art and Image to the High School. Art is a thing deeply rooted in Raffaele’s soul, his strong hand, defined by the markedsign of the pencil, the pen, the oil crayon up to the material texture of his paintings of villages, boats, architectures and abstract volumes up to the theme ‘men’. His portraits of a haily, smoky, ironic splattered humanity, ancestral and contemporary figures together, are often inspired by the East or always by strong ancient physiomies and rich in history, sharp and edgy to witness their own unmistakable identity and strength of character. The recurring theme of Raffaele’s art, however, has Always been that of architecture derived from his great and ancient passion. The exaltation of essential volumes, the archetype of the house, the pristine, pure and primitive form, the timeless, so ancient and already modern of rural houses called ‘turre’ in Calabrian, which are nothing more than our country houses, the farmhousesof Tuscany, the farm houses or facendas of South America, the only “great” insurmountable architectures that live in perpetual harmony and indelible with the natural landscape without in any way altering its balance both in proportion, in matter that in chromaticism everything in perfect harmony with their natural context. We can say that the poem mixed with the bitter nostalgia of the ancient Calabrian villages, too often mistreated and misunderstood, like the villages of Scigliano and countless others deeply known, loved, drawn, watercoloured and painted by thearchitect Ripoli are the true source of inspiration and driving force of his art. From this world so linked to his cultural preparation, to his architectural studies, to his own choices of belonging to the school of thought of “lessis more” to the architecture of the ‘memory’ of Aldo Rossi, his great teacher for whom he worked at the SDA studio in Amsterdam, he moves on to the expression of his steaming mad men, figures of our time or timeless? Kafkaesque figures who smoke inexorable the folly of their own complex, contradictory, illaryexistence. Human beings unable to express their true self, their true passions, impossible or otherwise difficult for most of us, such as architecture in the case of Raffaele.
MARIA BONGI
Roma, January 2011
The recurring theme of Raffaele’s art has Always been that of architecture derived from his great and ancient passion. The exaltation of essential volumes, the archetype of the house, the pristine, pure and primitive form, the timeless, so ancient and already modern of rural houses called ‘turre’ in Calabrian. The image represents an essential vision of rural Mediterranean architecture inspired by peasants’ homes by the old wall spoor and rough consumed by the time, the water and the sun, proud forms that have survived the times as an indelible and perennial testimony of its own history and memory. The loaded, strong and free brushstrokes do not distract from the dry and decisive contour of the shapes emphasized by black, which even if they are unsympathetic remain solidly standing in the unshakeablefirmness of theirveryessence. The feeling of roughness, and therefore of history and lived rendered by pictorial matter and indefinite chromaticism, from white that alters towards the shades of sand to the pink culminating in the strong red of the roofs, enhances that module of archaism par excellence, that of the first drawing of the child, referring to the dwelling, the nursery, the house, using his own essential and universal language. The volumes of houses are suspended in a surreal and silent dimension, as in a metaphysical dream of solid ancient forms that comfort the soul for their strength and solid certainty, indelible and reassuring in ourmemory. The artist transfers this dream in a solitary and empty context by suspending it in an abstract contemplation, offering us a gaunt and essential vision stripped of any naturalistic nod by stating that nothing is more abstract than real.
MARIA BONGI
Roma, May 2011
The painting of the Architect Raffaele Ripoli is intrinsically linked and inseparable from the shape , the volume and the physical structure of things. All of his art work stems from a common genesis rooted and imbued in the past, a sort of persistent ‘memory’ consciously and deliberately reaffirmed through geometric forms, volumes and the perpetual harmony found in the architectural purity of rural villages and medieval towns, which have always been the artist’s primary source of inspiration. The painter’s vocation to solidity and essential forms, metaphorically implying a sort of quest to preserve and protect the painter’s first and foremost value, that is “authenticity” , or simply “honesty” through a clear and definite representation firmly outlined by a secure hand, strongly marked contours and thick consistent texture. Primary forms that impose themselves as proud and resilient survivors made even more beautiful by the passage of time that has inexorably altered, distorted, discoloured, deformed, faded and cracked the surfaces of his living walls like human skin. The subjects depicted mostly refer to primitive rural contexts, a recurring leitmotif in Raffaele’s art, a deliberate choice that stems from his first love and deep knowledge of architecture , and it is precisely from the standpoint of Architecture that the artist departs from, by looking at what has always been there and will remain indelible in time. At this point we must recall a very meaningful quotation by Aldo Rossi, the philosopher Architect and poet whom Raffaele, after achieving his Degree in Architecture from the University of Florence, had the great pleasure and honour to work for at the SDA of Amsterdam; “l’architettura è la scena fissa delle vicende dell’uomo, carica di sentimenti, di generazioni, di eventi pubblici, tragedie private, di fattinuovi e antichi” (“architecture is the permanent stage in which a man’s life unfolds, full of passion, emotions, generations, public and private tragedies, new and old events”). The architecture depicted in Ripoli’s work is the stage where events, stories, old tales, folk rituals, traditional dancing take place, real places or ‘topos’ that can be identified with his settings that belong to his personal most authentic background from where his work takes off to expand to wider, universal horizons far from a merely literal representation or realistic depiction. The painting entitled ‘ I filosofi del catoio’ (the philosphers of the cellar) is one of those themes inspired by the folk tales and ancient rituals taking place in the lower grounds, the basements, the cellars the earthly places where the wine drinkers and thought decanters, in other words the philosophers of the town, gather around the table joined together in an ideal space , or ‘ventredellavacca’ as Raffaele would put it ‘ the cow’s belly’ a highly inspirational place , a sort of ancestral cave, basic and familiar, separated form the outdoor world by ancient thick stone walls , ensuring the perfect temperature all year round, keeping it mildly warm in the winter and cool in the hot summer topped by a wood beamed ceiling with a small passageway, and nothing else except a wooden table disturbs the monastic setting waiting for the feast to be consumed. The annual ritual after the pork has been killed and butchered and all of its wonderful products are shared from the spicy sausages, the juicy pork chops to the bacon and different types of salame. The moment immortalized is of course ‘ before’, when all is yet to be expected , anticipated , hoped and craved for…’the waiting time’ when the men are all gathered, impatiently circumnavigating the central axis of the composition, the table waiting for the wine and the yearly ritual to be celebrated almost biblically by feasting and drinking wine before the advent of winter, the fore bearer of darker days; another winter. The figures depicted are all men and the setting is a cellar or catoio in the local dialect (a word of ancient Greek derivation: katågeion (underground) ‘catoio’ is the common term used in Calabria to indicate a ground level room or basement) what we refer to as a cellar. Calabria is a coarse and powerful region of intense beauty. A deeply troubled land, scorned and abused that paradoxically could represent a universal South whose less fortunate inhabitants are forced to flee from to seek for a better destiny, while those who stay are the fighters and in some way the real heroes ready to sacrifice their lives for the sake of justice and equal rights. A region that comes back to life in summer, when a sort of reawakening occurs and the peak of its beauty is reached, a sort of cathartic moment when the turquoise sea and the blaring sun seem to obscure the lingering fears and lift your spirit to a Dionysian state with the opening of the festival season of folk dances, concerts and fairs giving way to the rich historical rituals of the Magna Grecia region. These are the magical moments, passionately and proudly lived and painted by Raffaele in his most recent works , ‘la Tarantella dei Carcerati’, ‘Kaulonia’, ‘la Processione’, ‘I filosofi del catoio’ and ‘Lo zampognaro’. Raffaele’s works are somehow ‘metaphors ofeternity’ where detailed vernacular description is supplanted by a sort of abstract realism far from the small and local toward a cross-cutting universal dimension. This momentum is associated with the painter’s impulse (somehowrooted in his richexperience as a draughtsman Architect) to inscribe the visibleintoa gridmade ofrigorous geometries. Nature is reshaped through a process of liberation and stripping of the banal and the superfluous. We can say that the painter’s inspiration really stems from memory, a vision of the past that is dilated andrecomposed by Architect Ripoli.
MARIA BONGI
Roma, January 2014
I have captured in your paintings essential but significant features of landscapes and characters of ourlandexposed in theirsimplicity and solarity (the light and well-definedcolours) in order to form over time also traditions and cultural aspects. It would take a leap of quality of people and administrators aimed at awareness and adaptation in the ways and times to cherish, make appreciate, disseminate what we have that constitutes the strength of our eventual civic and social evolution as well as economic.
DOLORES ARCURI
Roma, March 2014
In its numerous expressions, art, this elusive beauty, always new and continually moving from enchantment to enchantment, breathes in Raffaele Ripoli. His art is similar to seagulls, which fly silently, majestic and ready to seize the moment to dive into the depths of mystery-beauty. Those who, like Ripoli, fulfill a creative act with their works, leave the asphyxiating boundaries of their own individualism and spread the enchantment received, simultaneous with the Creation for that divine Breath. Only this way does it make sense to work as an Artist. Kahil Gibran says in “Letters of Love of the Prophet”: “When you can express what is in your soul, as Raffaele Ripoli has done, you live in a state of constant rebirth.” And Ripoli is the painter in “constant rebirth”, who historicises himself through his artistic production and contributes, in turn, to the “rebirth”of the users of his pictorial art by colouring the grey, hasty paths with white. He can be considered a painter-poet, because he is able to instil harmony, which tears the curtains of the heart and opens them to contemplation of beauty. Our modern lifestyle, characterized by an individual family and social modus vivendi, in which haste dominates, leaves no time for regenerative breaks, motivated by lasting emotional exchanges. The modern man has, of course, conquered big spaces, with super efficient shopping centres, but he is alone in line with his shopping trolley. The memory of the village, lived in the simplicity of living, but rich in human and spiritual sharing, skilfully and artistically depicted by Raffaele Ripoli, is not proposed as a scenic retrospective to be tasted. His intention, and for this we thank the Artist Ripoli, is to indicate, contemplating his Art, the re-proposal of a world united by peaceful coexistence, so that we are able to recognise the faces of each one as people and not as individuals. His illustrations of side-by-side houses, as united in a protective embrace, capture the vital dimension of society. The closeness-knowledge of a humanity, enclosed in such dwellings, makes living humanizing. This is the goal that our Artist wants to give, in contrast to modern housing. Today’s dwellings, although more functional and comfortable, do not encourage the closeness-knowledge of people, who, though close, feel distant, because they are locked in the privacy of their own home. The possibility of coming out of existential isolation, to live the historicity of an environmental humanism with those around us, takes place through the contemplation of Ripoli’s artistic-didactic paintings. The colours, as well as the houses, the landscapes and the characters, are enclosed in the spiritual temple of our artist, his birthplace, Scigliano, in the province of Cosenza, which bends down to kiss, full of gratitude, the scenic beauty of the Savuto Valley that lies below, caressed by the marine effluvia, generously sent by the Tyrrhenian Sea. The chromatic visions of these enchanting places burst into the soul of our Artist: the green of the foliage, the cracked white of the houses, the blue of the sky, in a constant competition for brightness with the blue of the Tyrrhenian Sea, the red of the oranges and the yellow of lemons, with their perfumes, the bright sunsets, the black of the costumes of our women: wives, mothers, sisters, keepers of labours carried with sublime dignity. Religiously internalised in the various anthropological changes, Ripoli expresses them in pictorial art. Returning with the pictorial memory to this universe of life, cadenced by calm, but effective operational modules, is for Ripoli an inner pilgrimage to revive his own pulsating identity as a son of Calabria and transmit it to those who are in front of him to admire his art. Ours is a land that is constantly struggling to defend its own historical way of life from the assaults of globalization, which aims to impose cultures far from ours. Raffaele Ripoli’s works are therefore a spiritual tonic, a song to rediscover our typical and essential existential condition, full of flavours, voices, customs and colours, able to dispel a rampant scientism that deprives man of his sacredness. Thanks to our artist for his intent to do his best with his works, which, beyond their deserved, recognised artistic value, offer generous educational tools.
ELIO CORTESE
Crotone, February 2020
Raffaele Ripoli’s pictorial “fatigue” captures on the canvas glimpses of ancient villages, sunrises and sunsets, moments of village life, solitary “turre”, hinted figures of men and women who move, in their static nature, in an almost surreal atmosphere. To the user, with distracted eyes and fleeting glance, it may seem that the painter has an excess of care of volumes, in his precise and harmonically contextualized geometries, and it is true! This concern, however, does not materialise in a cold virtuosity as an end in itself, because the kaleidoscopic use of those warm, sometimes dazzling colours, gives the canvases a Mediterranean atmosphere from which a whispered vitality emanates, even in the apparent inanimate silence. But this can only be discovered by those who are capable of making journeys of the mind. And it is on a journey through memory that Raffaele Ripoli’s work leads and guides those who look at it with enchanted and, perhaps, a little melancholy eyes. It is in the journey that the landscape, the alleys, the faces just mentioned, apparently inexpressive and without communicative yearnings, speak, whispering the fatigue of living and show the liberating tension in the notes of ancient instruments, rooted in an exorcizing folklore, distant but current. Raffaele’s paintings find a possible key to interpretation in his life and professional experience. He trained in purely technical studies: he graduated, in fact,in architecture which explains the care of volumes. After long experiences of study and work in the Netherlands, the Author has returned to his land of origin: an ancient village, blessed by the heaven for its position overlooking the Gulf of Lamezia, from which you can enjoy sunrises and sunsets that carry in a mystical and contemplative dimension; a village that he loves as a grateful son, and from which he draws the sunny sweetness, the dazzling brightness and the intense cobalt of colours, which give a soul to his painting.
EZIO ARCURI
Cosenza, February 2020
In your landscape paintings I’ve seen echoes of the figurative Kandinsky to the last “Murnau – Landschaft mit gr’nem Haus” that projected him towards abstraction, something of Franz Marc in colour as well as suggestions of Van Gogh that anyone who visits the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam carries with him as an inspirational imprinting and I understand that you have had a certain attendance with Amsterdam. Rothko’s yellow and blue are reinterpreted in a Calabrian key, fused in the light of your land, and in a certain bright light that cuts the edges I also saw Hopper. In your paintings there is the vibrant soul of light, the smell of saltiness, there is the glare of the southern sun against the houses. I see the landscapes by Guttuso that are perhaps also mixed with those same colours. After all, the subject is the same: our South, wonderful and cursed by the envy of the gods and the pettiness of men. I am a visionary without any use of drugs, so I apologize if you, the Artist, do not agree with any of my visions. In some rigorous geometries the architect and his link with Florence are revealed, this emerges not only from the glimpses of the Cathedral but also from the way in which the urban and non-urban landscapes are described. Watercolours have something reminiscent of Cezanne, they are as poetic as only watercolours can be. I repeat, mine are only immediate impressions, a kind of emotional flow of someone who in his total “ignorance” of the author, of his life path and his “sources” of inspiration, draws on his personal experience as an observer, reinterpreting it in his own way, without any philological rigour. But isn’t this also the magic of art? Entering the work with our shoes… risking of smearing it! On the characters I have yet to understand … Otto Grosz comes to mind but in some cases there is some trait (and colour) that reminds me of some work by Luzzati and something about the stylizations of the great Maestri like Matisse and Picasso himself.
PAOLA ACETO
Pescara, February 2020
I’ve known Raffaele Ripoli since we were kids. I’ve always considered him an eccentric, singular, life-filled man. A whimsical person who stands out for initiative and originality. I was therefore not surprised that his job as an architect – also carried out for a long time in Amsterdam – has long been accompanied by an artistic research that, starting with drawing, has become increasingly complex and has led him over time to a more intense production, even and above all pictorial. In recent years the Leitmotiv of its investigation is its homeland: Calabria, with its harshness, its lights, its colours. Whether they are architectures or figures they are strong works, with a decisive impact, that know how to grasp the true substance rather than the real form of what they represent. Country glimpses with figures of villagers, but more often solitary and mute; perched houses. Deliberately careless elements of perspective rules since it is not the search for a realistic truth that interests him, it is its essence, the message behind the appearance. The places are made recognizable by a kind of meta-language, made of lines, dense layers of colour, skilled architectural interlocks that show us a real, bold, sincere land. Ripoli is looking for eternal sites, time survivors and never transformed. He represents a reality that knows well, that loves and that is part of himself. An example of this is the image of Turra – a country cottage in the Calabrian lands – which is used in many of his works where we see it stand solitary and proud, aware of its leading role. And then, the views of Scigliano, the village near Cosenza where he is originally from, with its characteristic narrow streets, steep climbs, clusters of houses, glimpses, churches; some views of the nearby coast. All these works reveal a common denominator: the strong sense of belonging to that land and the desire to translate its most intrinsic aspects into art. Also in the figure he is constantly looking for the archetype. Not people but characters, characterized by a rendering of expressionist matrix conducted almost to exasperation and pervaded by a pleasant, subtle, vein of humour: the pianist, the Jew, the politician, the communist priest, the Freemasons, but also the Lombard, the Irpinian, the little man of the valley. There is no physiognomic research in these subjects. They are figures recognizable by a very stringent iconography, by a symbolic language made of signs and colours. The sharp and flamboyant forms of these figures almost cut out in the background, in spite of the seriousness of the theme, also become a pretext for a joyful and strongly decorative composition. The case of portraits is different, such as that of his mother, a beautiful southern woman that I had the pleasure of meeting. In this work, as in his self-portrait Ripoli seeks the similarity and does so by exalting the most obvious details of the face, such as his own gaze, attentive and inquiring. His production is courageous, incessant, in constant evolution. However, though the normal transitions and changes, it always maintains its frankness, that direct and sincere way of opening up to the world, set as it is on a safe and solid road that will still give many surprises.
CINZIA VIRNO
Roma, March 2020
Synthetic or grotesque works. Raffaele succeeds, despite the apparent coldness of solid geometries and improbable perspectives of diverging lines, in communicating all the light, the sun and the immobile heat of the “controre” (early afternoon hours, particularly in hot summer days) of his land, daughter of the sun and of silence. Without humanity because, who knows that land, also knows that people hide during the hours described by Raffaele, because light and heat reign outside and the time stumbles. In these essential artistic compositions, everything is perceived as baskets of life. Then, there is humanity, works with grotesque traits fragmented in details that fill the figures and delineate their characteristics. There are two worlds in Raffaele, one motionless and eternal and the other transient and in progress. The painting technique is what has always characterized him. Essential and basic, though in the process it has acquired elegance and clearness. Works of great value because they have always been out of the schemes and typical of Raffaele. They have lost the original naivety but have preserved the honesty and the exhaustive and powerful synthesis of narration of the seafaring and rural world of his land.
ANTONIO RICCIARDI
Roma, April 2020