"The Collage conversations."
…“Piero’s philosophy and art were affected by the aftermath of WWII when he was living in Nice, France, in the early 1950s. His compositional preference for the hard painted edge softening into fluid linear motion is similar to that found in collage-like paintings by Fernand Léger, or those of Picasso and Braque who were also living in Nice at that time. Rather than illustrate the contemporary industrial age, or try to top masters with a new interpretation of old themes, Piero thought about Chaos. He drew. He painted: He steeped issues of composition and theory like fine tea. He chose his own path. To courageously explore the meaning of life, to delve into the great unknown, to chart chaos with brilliant glass-like bits of shimmering color juxtaposed against a background of stark cool white.These collaged symphonies of movement and color invite comparison to paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, with each artist gracefully dancing from edge to curve... . |
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Like all artists, Piero had lots of collage materials. His collections were neatly tucked into interesting boxes, gathered and stacked under counters and on shelves in his studios in Torino and Oulx. His eyes gleamed when showing me a stash of succulent colored papers, a treasured box of markers, a collection of adhesives and glues. The collector in me resonated with envy for his prizes: their value not as great in the individual scrap of paper as it was in the promise of another view into the imagination. We were made much richer by the material touchstone as it led to brainstorms of possibilities of making more collage…”
(Quoted from Linda Van Hart, “The collage conversations”, published in Italian in Ivana Mulatero, ed., Piero Lerda. Dal caos al gioco. Opere dal 1948 al 2007, Edizioni Marcovaldo, Caraglio, 2009). Linda Van Hart, sculptor, Maryland ,USA)
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