Francesco Del Drago takes a place of absolute
priority in the Contemporary Art's view as regards the employ
and the study of color.
The artist's discoveries in chromatic field will be the ground
of future researches.
Even Since 1955 Graham Hovey, of the University of Wisconsin,
in a programme for the Broadcast and Press described him as "One
of the best painters of his generation".
Going on, Hovey referred to Del Drago as the best representative,
in the artistic view, of the Third Force (in L. Budigna "La
terza forza di Del Drago"), grown alternative and overcoming
the close opposition figurative-abstraction, particularly alive
at that time in Italy and France.
An important turning point as regards the beginning of the methodic
use of color's theories happens, in his work at the beginning
of the seventies: decisive is the exhibition
in 1971 at the American Center for Students and Artists of Paris
(where he taught painting for two years) made by a selection of
work of 1970-71.
In those works appears definitely his own kinetism, calculated
on advance with regard to the effects of natural and artificial
lighting.
This differentiates the work from preceding forms of kinetism
which were based on structures, lines, and mechanism of light
projection. This kinetism is based only on the impossibility of
transmitting simultaneously, from the retina to the visual center
of the brain, several colored massages of the same tonal value.
'Leonardo', International Journal of Contemporary
Artists, Pergamon Press (Oxford-New York) has published in 1971
an article on the research, the theories and the results of Del
Drago's work, the first to give place to his theoretic researches;
based today on a corpus of 35000 handwritten pages, from which
emerged his 36 international lectures.
Fundamental points of his research:
1) A form's reversibility (positive-negative), begun by the Bauhaus
and developed by Vasarely. Comparing to his geometric reversibility'game,
the artist applies it to a not geometric wide runging topology.
2) Optical Art: obtained not through structures (Vasarely, Riley),
but with couples of colors warm-cold of the same tone.
3) The slow automatism, like writing of the unconscious theorized
in a lecture given in 1974 at the "College de France"
in Paris, in opposition to the fast automatism by Masson and others
and by Pollock's Action Painting. It starts from a line not drawn
yet, coming out first from oneiric needs and later on from drives
in opposition to the geometric-mathematic structures on the background
in dialectic rationality-sentiment.
There was a period when the whole painting was based on automatism,
the semigeometric forms too.
4) Opposition of modulated and unmodulated surfaces of color,
to stimulate the sight with two different uses of color.
5) Morphogenesis of form, in which hard and male becomes soft
and female. It is from the "Theory of Catastrophes"
by Rene'Thom.
6) Phenomenic transparences; partly invented by the artist, partly
derived and modified by the artist from those studied by Gestalt.
7) Formal and chromatic structures to excite the erogenous zone
of vision, and to obtain aesthetic satisfaction like an "optical
orgasm" independent from the cultural comprehension of the
work.
8) The chromatic circle's results:
- green taking a place from the warm lemon green to the cold turquoise
it is not only complementary to red, but it has also orange and
violet like opposite colors.
- the right couples more aesthetically effective, are made by
opposite pigments of the same tone. For example the ultramarine
blue and the light orange are exactly complementaries, but they
aren't in good rapport. This has been the mistake of the previous
painting.
- the discovery of cold red as primary color let the artist extend
the chromatic range from the still used six opposite colors to
eight.
- the black zones mean a lack of color zone (The dark yellow does
not exist). The yellow zone is thin because immediately on his
left becomes orange and on his right green.
Marcella Cossu - National Gallery
of Modern Art in Rome
