The days of the pandemic that the world is experiencing are like a vortex that has dragged us into the abyss of the unknown, darkness and pain. We are all in the vortex. This is the image that many people – even myself – have experienced mentally, but also physically. The emergence of a terrible and unknown virus has left scorched earth around us. Many lives are gone in the silence, in the solitude, in the distance of the affections, even of a hug. We all feel the need to recover strength, energy, images of life. And to return to everyday life, surely changed.

From these thoughts this project “Vorticism: Lockdown” was born. I plunged into the vortex of the colors of the decomposed and corrupt advertising posters, to draw something new, something that opened the wings of hope. A torn and worn-out advertising poster, expired in his message, is the image of these times overwhelmed by the fury of the virus. I’m in love with vorticism: I still remember a great exhibition in London, 10 years ago, at the Tate Gallery. So, I let myself be carried away by the vortex of shapes and colors. I de-structured waste paper strips and re-structured them into 4  works. In this photogallery I present you all the 4 collages.

“Vorticism” is the avant-garde movement which was influenced by the tensions of the early twentieth century, with desires and expectations of renewal. Vorticism, in depicting vortex shapes, wants to express the concept of energy and strength by inserting movement and dynamism into art. A group of “vorticists” was founded by the artist, writer and polemicist, Wyndham Lewis in 1914. Their only group exhibition was held in London the following year. Vorticism was launched by Blast  magazine which contained  two manifestos by Lewis ‘blasting’ what he considered to be the effeteness of British art and culture and proclaiming the vorticist aesthetic: ‘The New Vortex plunges to the heart of the Present, we produce a New Living Abstraction’.

The “Vorticism: Lockdown” series aims to pay homage to the intuitions and sense of an avant-garde movement which, precisely in the lockdown phase for the emergence of the coronavirus, indicates a desire of re-birth, of re-launch and, why not ?, of re-volt of culture, lifestyles, behaviors and values, respecting the person, the human dimension and the natural balance of the planet.