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.