The timeline
The 80s marked the beginning of a new era for Silvio Santini: new ideas, research and passion that continue to engage him today. At this point, his works seemed to take on an innovative sculptural aspect. The artistic language grew closer to the principles of Concrete Art as a source of inspiration, exploring the purity of harmony in the formal solution and researching into the balance in mathematical laws.
Sculptures like Due frontiere, Maestà, Passaggio n. 2 show such quality in their craftsmanship and expression that make the material used (in the first two cases Statuary White and in the third Carrara White), light, bright and vibrant, to the point that the works seem to hover in the air around the material.
This brought him to a climax in the nineties with the sculptures Open Sky and Continuo. The first, in a crystalline Brazilian material, opens up towards the centre with outstretched diagonals, as if it were weaving the empty space with the solid in a sky open to infinite possibilities. The second, instead, originates from a cube of alabaster that takes on the form of a circular ribbon, folding over itself. It shows such sensitivity considering the formal rigueur and an array of colour and structure that causes amazement.
What most definitely influenced this new line of thought, this new attitude to space, solid and void as a study of visual and structural symmetry of the work was the meeting with Max Bill back in 1982. Santini remembered Max Bill as an extraordinary genius who very elegantly ranged from graphics to painting and from design to sculpture with extreme care and concreteness. A line of thought that has spanned and moulded different ages and that has found and still finds fertile ground where a taste for art and life can blossom.
A very special meeting for Silvio Santini that over time turned into a prosperous and much valued artistic relationship. Immediately there seemed to be that affinity which binds a pupil to his master, focused on work, study and learning. This relationship gradually inspired Santini with new ideas, a new way of savouring the tension that brings together the mortal and the immortal and has the strength to bring out that inner demon which makes the intimate chords of the soul vibrate.
This period of study and art can be summarised as, It is humanity’s ability to reason that makes it possible to coordinate emotional values so that what we call art ensues. Now in every picture the basis of its composition is geometry or in other words the means of determining the mutual relationship of its component parts either on plane or in space, taken from Max Bill’s writings entitled: The mathematical approach in contemporary art dated 1949. In fifteen years of friendship, Santini had the skill and ability to assimilate the fundamental concepts of Max Bill’s philosophy related to the world of art and design such as the essential, linear, functional and simple. Over time, he managed to transfer these concepts to his sculptures.
Despite that significant meeting with Max Bill, today considered a master and mentor, it is evident that in the eighties, just as before and after, all research and issues arising from the representation of the completed work were solved in the sculpture itself, once it was completed.
In this sense, for Santini the finished sculpture could be considered a new departure point, since it is as if the work left a glimpse of other possibilities of instilling new emotions and relations.
Hence, he confirms that the sculptural representation of reality or of ourselves is one of the oldest inventions of art. He is also convinced and aware of the undeniable relationship between art and the world.
The fascination for a finished work of sculpture leads him to continue with the same subject and to continue his research, perfecting it and persisting with the same theme. Thus, again in those years, he made Iris and Donna di Cuori using Azul Bahia that confers beauty and grace to the work.
