Italian artist's work an homage to athletes

Italian artist's work an homage to athletes

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): What does Italy mean to you? To many students of
Universitas Negeri Jakarta, the boot-shaped country in Europe
conjures up images of Ferraris and soccer.

This was evident in a competition on graphic arts, painting
and sculpture organized by The Italian Cultural Institute here.
Students concentrated on illustrating their impressions of Italy
through the twin themes of racing cars and soccer. The best
entries, which are now on display at the institute, include I
Wish I Could Fly, a sculpture in mixed media by Supartiah, Momo
Rini and Asti with pieces of wood that are painted to give an
amazing metallic look.

Nur Andi and Solikin, winners of the first prize in sculpture
together with I Wish I Could Fly, created a fantasy piece out of
bicycle spare parts that is extremely imposing. A graphic design
by Lutfi has a Ferrari superimposed upon an impression of the
Colosseum, and Marwan's Waiting for the Chess Player stands out
as a figurative canvas in oil with a surreal theme that is
attractive for its details.

"The idea of a competition like this one is to get Indonesian
youngsters to become more familiar with Italy," institute
director Alberto Di Mauro told The Jakarta Post.

The institute organized the art competition to coincide with
The Challengers, a traveling exhibition of works by physician-
painter Ottorino Mancioli. Put together as Italy's tribute to the
Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, the exhibition opened in Jakarta in
February as a testimony to the great tradition of sports in
Italy.

After its Jakarta run, it will travel to Bali in April and on
to Singapore, before returning to Europe, including a stopover in
the birthplace of the Olympics, Athens, Greece.

Like many Romans in the first half of the 20th century,
Mancioli was attracted to sports as a practice of physical and
psychological self-discipline. He was not interested in one sport
but intrigued by the dynamics of the whole range of athletic
pursuits.

Perhaps his attraction to sports can be traced back to his
almost anemic childhood in a well-off Roman family. In a tribute
to her father, Laura Mancioli writes in the exhibition catalog by
Gil Sfidanti that, "judging from firsthand accounts and
photographs, the young Ottorino could not be called an attractive
child: skinny, with a stammer, a frowning expression and
melancholy brown eyes. He was a little 'savage'".

Mancioli may have been a difficult child, but he loved to
read. It also led to the development of something which would be
even more significant in his life, as he constantly illustrated
the buff bodies of the heroes he came across in Homer's legendary
tales. Perhaps his interest was derived from the fact the
majestic bodies contrasted with his own fragile state of health.

He tried to make up for it by playing outdoors as much as he
could and got involved with tennis so passionately once that he
failed in school. By the time he was an adult he began to enjoy
sports for their sheer esthetics.

He graduated in medicine and received his first important
recognition in art when he participated in the Art Olympics,
which ran concurrently with the actual Games in Los Angeles in
1932. Four years later he produced a number of works that were
selected for the Art Olympics of Berlin.

Indulged

Through his works it seems as if Mancioli saw this world as a
big gymnasium where human beings indulged in all kinds of games
just to inspire him to practice his love for drawing.

Although he had a prosperous career as a general practitioner,
he continued to draw constantly, including for advertising,
throughout most of his adult life. Even an injury sustained
during World War II, which caused paralysis of his right arm,
could not stop him. He became ambidextrous, using his left hand
instead.

He also developed his love of other art forms. He was already
in his 50s when he learned to sculpt; when he died in March 1990
at the age of 82, he had just finished a figure of a boxer in red
wax.

Yet he is most famous for putting to paper numerous dynamic
images of athletes in action with decorative torsos and laced
arches. But toward the end of his life, Mancioli no longer wanted
to capture action alone but also the emotional side of every
move. He became interested in the psychological relevance of a
movement caught in the heat of the moment.

His earlier works are precious for the amazing details in
figures, like that of the crouching goalkeepers who cradle the
ball as if it was dearer to them than life itself, or the tennis
player whose lithe torso forms an elegant bow.

Later drawings are even more remarkable, but for quite the
opposite reason.

In his works from the 1950s and especially the 1960s, the
sumptuous details are replaced by a few lines that leave all else
behind except the ecstasy involved in the act of either rowing,
skating or hurdling.

A favorite is the flurry of lines of the Cyclist in Sur Place
(1968), which in the opinion of this writer is a masterpiece.

Mancioli's art is also special as he never celebrates
individual star performers but aims at capturing the sheer spirit
of anyone, the great and the small, who participates in a sport.

"He did not aim to portray winners, therefore, but
participants, considering competitive sport as a self-molding
practice, emblematically significant in itself of the liberating
achievements of physical and psychological human capacities;
behavior in the average sportsman, therefore, rather than
necessarily in the highest-ranking athletes," Enrico Crispolti
writes in the foreword to the beautiful catalog.

Instead, it was the Olympian movement of muscle and their
psychological abandon that animated him. The aesthetic trauma and
drama of the human body in motion obviously gave him much
pleasure, and it is gratifying to think that his drawings are an
attempt to share this love with the world. The plates in the
catalog are a an alluring representation of his works, but the
real enjoyment is to be had from seeing them up-close. Catch this
exhibition while you can.

The exhibition of works by Mancioli and students from
Universitas Negeri Jakarta is at The Italian Cultural Institute,
Jl. HOS Cokroaminoto 117 until March 17. Further inquiries can be
made at 3927531 or access the institute's homepage at
www.itacultjkt.or.id.