Alessandro KokocinskI è nato a Porto Recanati nel 1948 da
madre russa e padre polacco.
La sua giovane mano riprendeva
le emozioni e la bellezza di quei posti e di quelle esperienze. Nei primi anni
’60, a Buenos Aires entra a far parte del fantastico mondo del circo come
acrobata con i cavalli e inizia a viaggiare per l’America Latina conoscendo i
più grandi artisti circensi tra cui Popov. Tornato a Buenos Aires, arricchisce
la sua arte lavorando come scenografo teatrale, ma la persecuzione militare
argentina lo costringe a rifugiarsi a Santiago del Cile (1969), dove espone
disegni di chiara denuncia politica (le sue opere si trovano presso il Museo
d’Arte Moderna di Santiago).
Alla caduta del governo Allende, Kokocinski si trova già in Europa, a Roma, dove è accolto da intellettuali come Rafael Alberti, Alberto Moravia, Carlo Levi e altri. Prima di lasciare Roma per Anticoli Corrado, partecipa alla X Quadriennale d’Arte Nazionale di Roma ed è invitato dallo Stato Vaticano ad esporre nei propri Musei e ad illustrare l’Angelus Dei per l’anno Santo sotto il pontificato di Papa Paolo VI. Nel 1977 viene allestita una sua personale al Palazzo dei Diamanti di Ferrara, nella quale l’artista continua a denunciare, attraverso la pittura, la crudele realtà sociale del Sud America, in cui è soggetto al vigile controllo della dittatura militare dell’Argentina.
Dopo circa due anni si trasferisce a Labro, un paesino medievale dell’Umbria. Nel 1986 soggiorna per alcuni mesi in Estremo Oriente, tra la Thailandia e la Cina. A Hong Kong è allestita una sua grande personale patrocinata dal Ministero degli Esteri, che inaugurerà l’Hong Kong Art Festival Centre. Di ritorno dall’Oriente si ferma in Germania, dove tiene nel 1991 delle mostre personali: all’Akademie der Kunste di Berlino e al Museo Leonhardi di Dresda.
Nel 1992 è accolta a Praga nel Palazzo Lobrovicky un’altra personale. Continui i suoi viaggi fra Germania, Roma e Buenos Aires che lo ha ospitato di recente con una grande retrospettiva nel Museo Nazionale di Belle Arti patrocinata dal Ministero degli Esteri e dalla Fundaciòn J.L. Borges. Borges rimase particolarmente toccato dall’opera di Kokocinski.
La sua pittura, d’un realismo visionario e accattivante, assomma il mondo fantastico russo, la passione e il realismo sudamericano e il fascino luministico secentesco italiano. Forse proprio da questo caleidoscopio di culture e di vocazioni etico-sentimentali è nata la prospettiva fantastica, insieme allucinata e sapiente, la pittura tutta fuga e tutta compendiata energia che ormai da tempo la critica ammira senza riserve; ma che piace, per la misteriosa tensione che sorprende e coinvolge, anche ai non addetti ai lavori. Da poco è tornato a lavorare in teatro. Ha ideato e realizzato assieme all’attrice Lina Sastri lo spettacolo “Cuore mio”, dove la sua pittura si è fusa con la drammaticità e la musicalità napoletana.
Alla caduta del governo Allende, Kokocinski si trova già in Europa, a Roma, dove è accolto da intellettuali come Rafael Alberti, Alberto Moravia, Carlo Levi e altri. Prima di lasciare Roma per Anticoli Corrado, partecipa alla X Quadriennale d’Arte Nazionale di Roma ed è invitato dallo Stato Vaticano ad esporre nei propri Musei e ad illustrare l’Angelus Dei per l’anno Santo sotto il pontificato di Papa Paolo VI. Nel 1977 viene allestita una sua personale al Palazzo dei Diamanti di Ferrara, nella quale l’artista continua a denunciare, attraverso la pittura, la crudele realtà sociale del Sud America, in cui è soggetto al vigile controllo della dittatura militare dell’Argentina.
Dopo circa due anni si trasferisce a Labro, un paesino medievale dell’Umbria. Nel 1986 soggiorna per alcuni mesi in Estremo Oriente, tra la Thailandia e la Cina. A Hong Kong è allestita una sua grande personale patrocinata dal Ministero degli Esteri, che inaugurerà l’Hong Kong Art Festival Centre. Di ritorno dall’Oriente si ferma in Germania, dove tiene nel 1991 delle mostre personali: all’Akademie der Kunste di Berlino e al Museo Leonhardi di Dresda.
Nel 1992 è accolta a Praga nel Palazzo Lobrovicky un’altra personale. Continui i suoi viaggi fra Germania, Roma e Buenos Aires che lo ha ospitato di recente con una grande retrospettiva nel Museo Nazionale di Belle Arti patrocinata dal Ministero degli Esteri e dalla Fundaciòn J.L. Borges. Borges rimase particolarmente toccato dall’opera di Kokocinski.
La sua pittura, d’un realismo visionario e accattivante, assomma il mondo fantastico russo, la passione e il realismo sudamericano e il fascino luministico secentesco italiano. Forse proprio da questo caleidoscopio di culture e di vocazioni etico-sentimentali è nata la prospettiva fantastica, insieme allucinata e sapiente, la pittura tutta fuga e tutta compendiata energia che ormai da tempo la critica ammira senza riserve; ma che piace, per la misteriosa tensione che sorprende e coinvolge, anche ai non addetti ai lavori. Da poco è tornato a lavorare in teatro. Ha ideato e realizzato assieme all’attrice Lina Sastri lo spettacolo “Cuore mio”, dove la sua pittura si è fusa con la drammaticità e la musicalità napoletana.
THE
ARTIST'S LIFE
My origins were tumultuous and the memories anchored in the depths of my unconscious have left their inexorable mark on my destiny.
I have nostalgic memories of life with my grandfather Costantin Borislavich (the grandfather who was beautiful both in soul and body, an engineer who was passionate about the theatre, where indeed he worked as a set designer, and who was also a pianist and amateur astronomer) and my parents. My mother Elena had just begun High School specializing in Art when war broke out.
My grandfather and my mother fled to Italy to seek refuge; my mother earnt a living painting portraits. It was 1943.
My grandfather, my mother and my father Janusz (the son of a Russian gipsy and a Pole, at the age of seventeen he was already an anarchist and a combatant) were the only survivors; the rest of the family was swept away by the winds of the holocaust and by war.
My grandfather was the first, swallowed up by the flames of the Russian revolution. The others were dragged along, witnesses or protagonists or instruments, like leaves hurtling in the raging storm of the Second World War.
Before the age of twenty my father Janusz was imprisoned for three years in a Siberian lager (in Kamntchatka). From there, he embarked on an incredible journey throughout Russia, central Asia and the hanging gardens of Persia and eventually reached Africa, where he enrolled in General Anders' Anglo-Polish army. His baptism of fire was the battle of El Alamein; after that he travelled from the South of Italy right up to the North. He took part in the battle of Montecassino and crossed the Gothic Line.
My mother and grandfather had made their incredible escape from the Germans who were taking them to Treblinka and by travelling through Austria they managed to get to Italy in 1943.
The war ended and this part of humanity began to lick its wounds.
The love between Janusz and my mother was born while Janusz was at a military base on the Adriatic front, in the land of Leopardi and Beniamino Gigli. They thought the tragedy of persecution had ended, but they were wrong. They were once again relentlessly struck by political indifference....My mother Elena and my grandfather Costantin Borislavich were detained by the Allied Armed Forces and locked up in a prison camp awaiting repatriation to the Soviet Union (where God only knows what would have happened to them). My father didn't think twice: with the help of some companions and without doing much damage he managed to free most of the prisoners, thereby turning them into refugees and turning himself into a deserter....
With the arrival of spring and Easter, I too arrived.
At dawn, gazing at the stars and gripping my father's hands, my mother felt the first contractions together with cravings for boiled potatoes, which some generous souls gave her. Even today I still adore this yearned-for tuber. Janusz witnessed my first cries and placed me on this earth with his powerful, energetic hands, cutting my umbilical cord with skill and gentleness.
From then on he was involved in many other adventurous situations.
I arrived in this world in one of humanity's painful moments. I am the son of warriors forced to flee and of great pain, but at the same time of great ideals and hopes....
Just after my birth dysentery and fever threatened to take me back to the Creator. I was in a coma and dying when one of the many miracles that have accompanied me during my life occurred. Who knows by what strange circumstances a doctor from Chile (the country where, as an adult, I would experience the utopian dream of a free society, a dream smashed by the tragic coup of the 11th September, and where my daughter Maya would be born) ordered my parents to give me a spoonful of roasted flour mixed with a llittle water, and if I got through the night....
And here I am. On this earthly path, with my store of sentiments and weaknesses, my primitive wanderings throughout this world began, at times in circus tents, at times on adventurous journeys to the four corners of the earth, looking for a homeland which I cannot find; I would like to conceive it, create it, visualize it, and this drove me to art. My fate has been beautiful, tragic and happy. I grew up and was educated in the tough school of life as a totally stateless person, giving myself body and soul to the demon of the creative act as a witness of our times....
I am my own heaven.
I am my own hell. Kokocinski
My origins were tumultuous and the memories anchored in the depths of my unconscious have left their inexorable mark on my destiny.
I have nostalgic memories of life with my grandfather Costantin Borislavich (the grandfather who was beautiful both in soul and body, an engineer who was passionate about the theatre, where indeed he worked as a set designer, and who was also a pianist and amateur astronomer) and my parents. My mother Elena had just begun High School specializing in Art when war broke out.
My grandfather and my mother fled to Italy to seek refuge; my mother earnt a living painting portraits. It was 1943.
My grandfather, my mother and my father Janusz (the son of a Russian gipsy and a Pole, at the age of seventeen he was already an anarchist and a combatant) were the only survivors; the rest of the family was swept away by the winds of the holocaust and by war.
My grandfather was the first, swallowed up by the flames of the Russian revolution. The others were dragged along, witnesses or protagonists or instruments, like leaves hurtling in the raging storm of the Second World War.
Before the age of twenty my father Janusz was imprisoned for three years in a Siberian lager (in Kamntchatka). From there, he embarked on an incredible journey throughout Russia, central Asia and the hanging gardens of Persia and eventually reached Africa, where he enrolled in General Anders' Anglo-Polish army. His baptism of fire was the battle of El Alamein; after that he travelled from the South of Italy right up to the North. He took part in the battle of Montecassino and crossed the Gothic Line.
My mother and grandfather had made their incredible escape from the Germans who were taking them to Treblinka and by travelling through Austria they managed to get to Italy in 1943.
The war ended and this part of humanity began to lick its wounds.
The love between Janusz and my mother was born while Janusz was at a military base on the Adriatic front, in the land of Leopardi and Beniamino Gigli. They thought the tragedy of persecution had ended, but they were wrong. They were once again relentlessly struck by political indifference....My mother Elena and my grandfather Costantin Borislavich were detained by the Allied Armed Forces and locked up in a prison camp awaiting repatriation to the Soviet Union (where God only knows what would have happened to them). My father didn't think twice: with the help of some companions and without doing much damage he managed to free most of the prisoners, thereby turning them into refugees and turning himself into a deserter....
With the arrival of spring and Easter, I too arrived.
At dawn, gazing at the stars and gripping my father's hands, my mother felt the first contractions together with cravings for boiled potatoes, which some generous souls gave her. Even today I still adore this yearned-for tuber. Janusz witnessed my first cries and placed me on this earth with his powerful, energetic hands, cutting my umbilical cord with skill and gentleness.
From then on he was involved in many other adventurous situations.
I arrived in this world in one of humanity's painful moments. I am the son of warriors forced to flee and of great pain, but at the same time of great ideals and hopes....
Just after my birth dysentery and fever threatened to take me back to the Creator. I was in a coma and dying when one of the many miracles that have accompanied me during my life occurred. Who knows by what strange circumstances a doctor from Chile (the country where, as an adult, I would experience the utopian dream of a free society, a dream smashed by the tragic coup of the 11th September, and where my daughter Maya would be born) ordered my parents to give me a spoonful of roasted flour mixed with a llittle water, and if I got through the night....
And here I am. On this earthly path, with my store of sentiments and weaknesses, my primitive wanderings throughout this world began, at times in circus tents, at times on adventurous journeys to the four corners of the earth, looking for a homeland which I cannot find; I would like to conceive it, create it, visualize it, and this drove me to art. My fate has been beautiful, tragic and happy. I grew up and was educated in the tough school of life as a totally stateless person, giving myself body and soul to the demon of the creative act as a witness of our times....
I am my own heaven.
I am my own hell. Kokocinski
PAINTINGS
Two years ago Kokocinski impressed many visitors with a wonderful exhibition at the Refectory Hall of the Palazzo Venezia. That exhibition was entitled 'Transfiguration' and it sent forth that angry and apocalyptic spirit that makes Kokocinski unique on the contemporary art scene. A stateless, restless artist, citizen of the world and solitary individualist, Kokocinski has progressively developed an acute moral conscience which causes him to be extremely involved in yet aristocratically detached from his theme. In this fully mature phase his approach to his art is disconcerting in its total lack of any form of hedonism and the importance he nevertheless gives to reaching the highest possible quality of "manufacture".
Kokocinski has decided to have a "hand-to-hand fight" with his works, which look like they're his children, adored and massacred at the same time. In a certain sense the way he goes about things is frightening because he ignores the delicacy of the viewer's soul but never means to upset by using cheap sensational effects.
Indeed, the refined, somehow classical taste which Kokocinski has always expressed certainly does not subside in this current phase, however convulsive and exasperated it may be. This exhibition features his figures, maimed by a force that shakes them violently and drags them like Dantesque souls, a sort of demoniacal poem built using fear and desperation.
Two years ago Kokocinski impressed many visitors with a wonderful exhibition at the Refectory Hall of the Palazzo Venezia. That exhibition was entitled 'Transfiguration' and it sent forth that angry and apocalyptic spirit that makes Kokocinski unique on the contemporary art scene. A stateless, restless artist, citizen of the world and solitary individualist, Kokocinski has progressively developed an acute moral conscience which causes him to be extremely involved in yet aristocratically detached from his theme. In this fully mature phase his approach to his art is disconcerting in its total lack of any form of hedonism and the importance he nevertheless gives to reaching the highest possible quality of "manufacture".
Kokocinski has decided to have a "hand-to-hand fight" with his works, which look like they're his children, adored and massacred at the same time. In a certain sense the way he goes about things is frightening because he ignores the delicacy of the viewer's soul but never means to upset by using cheap sensational effects.
Indeed, the refined, somehow classical taste which Kokocinski has always expressed certainly does not subside in this current phase, however convulsive and exasperated it may be. This exhibition features his figures, maimed by a force that shakes them violently and drags them like Dantesque souls, a sort of demoniacal poem built using fear and desperation.
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Alessandro Kokocinski © 2014 Fondazione Kokocinski
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