What can we say about Salvo that hasn't already been said?

Renato Barilli once wrote that since the late Sixties Salvo has become popular as one of the most promising artists of the conceptual trend of art in Italy.
This is what others said, but also what Salvo himself maintained and he expressed it in an outstanding work, a stone tablet on which he engraved the words "IO SONO IL MIGLIORE" ("I am the best", Translator's note). But then our next question is: What can we say about an artist who imitates the Holy Scripture and the Commandments in his work and who maintains he is the best, what can we say, seeing as he thus prevents every judgement positive or negative and therefore any possible interpretation? Only two possibilities are left to us: renouncing all criticism and all reviews, or trying to write about him in the assumption of being "better than the best". In Italy though, aside from the artist's self-centered narcissism and aside the funny justification of the person who is writing, a statement like the one above also reminds of a historical and political background due to the fact that - as many of us know well - Palmiro Togliatti, the first Secretary of the newborn Italian communist party during the post-war years, was called "Il Migliore" ("The Best", Translator's note) by his "communist people". In an attempt at making more sense out of what I am saying, for I realize it might sound bizarre, I must point out that Togliatti - like any good communist - was interested in art, too, and on "Rinascita" he wrote in favor of realism and against the abstract art; this was a paradox of the left all over the world, for the left was "culturally" in favor of tradition and it refused progress, a fact that was going to exert a heavy influence upon the visual arts in Italy at that time as well as during the following years. I have mentioned these topics because Salvo's artistic development appears paradoxical, and because it indirectly attracts our attention again on a similar debate within his own artistic activity.

But please don't think that his drawing inspiration from the past could somehow diminish his art; in fact, he had declared that he was the best and he felt he was "all the names in history", so this was just another attempt on his part to assert the creative authority of the artist for he knows that only he who creates is able to define himself, while the politician must be defined by the others. It is a sort of a creative power that returns to art and by so doing spreads knowledge in the society. In fact, going back to the relationship between he who says "IO SONO IL MIGLIORE" and he who was called "Il Migliore", we must add that Salvo was accused of just about everything: as an extreme paradox, he was especially accused of being a fascist.

This fact reveals how paradoxical communism and the whole world of the avant-garde were; especially within the latter, people defined themselves as a whole as "left-winged", but they pretended to ignore the main lines about culture given by communism not only in Italy but all over the world, and they accused of being a fascist all those who expressed themselves in works which did look as if they were made according to the rules of communist ortodoxy. I do not intend to express a political judgment about Salvo's works, nor am I interested in giving him a specific political connotation, and I do not even think that he might have kept those references in mind. I just intend to say that his work is only apparently a mere observation of art, so that many consider it as being self-centered and "harmless", but in reality -just like any example of true art - it is a good means of revealing and criticising the kind of cultural action and the kind of cultural perception that are peculiar of society, or rather, of certain groups within society. He thus demontrated that he continued to do avant-garde work, and that it was still possible to "Épater les bourgeoises ou les intéllectuelles", for after the worldwide crisis of the bourgeoisie it seemed as if the last bourgeois had taken refuge in the restricted Élite of the arts. This is what Pasolini did, too, with his work which is so similar to that of Salvo, or viceversa in his movie version so rich of historical quotations and memories ranging from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to mannerism, from Giotto to Pontorno and Rosso Fiorentino. It is a similarity that we can notice in the desire of representing oneself, the former as Giotto-Pasolini in the Decamerone, the latter as San-Salvo in San Giorgio e il drago. The works of both of them are characterised by history, which is made though not only of the reality of faces and images, but also of the acid emphasizing of colors used by the Mannerists mentioned above. Both of them use light as the major element of their works: for the one it comes from the projector, for the other it emanates from the colors painted on the canvas.

Now we can start understanding why Salvo's works are so modern, and he is not only "all the names in history" but also all the themes of painting, be they more or less elevated: Saints and heroes, landscapes, interiors, still-lives, etc. which he presents again and again in series. It is a passage that finds a corresponding motif in the path that follows the passing of time from pre-history to history in the museum in Casole d'Elsa. But before we talk about any other series and before we take into consideration the value of this serial kind of action we must point out one fact: as concerns the pre-modern times the vase of flowers is identified with Caravaggio, in early modern times it is represented by Van Gogh and in the late modern times it is identified with Morandi; now, for post-modern times the reality of this theme can't belong but to Salvo; in fact only a few years ago he gave a new image, which is as yet not completely acknowledged and appreciated, to an aspect of art that is as crucial as it is simple.

This attention to the everyday life and to serial works actually demonstrates that series are not just a characteristic feature of the mechanical world of our times and of the world of art it refers to, they are rather a feature of the figurative painting that uses series not as a means of creating a mechanical similarity but on the contrary, to create a human difference. And this at a time characterised by an advanced technological production and re-production of images and things in series, to which the artist's response is a painted creation that simply gives life to a series of differences. But here simplicity - which does not mean over-simplifying - is a feature which characterises Salvo's work, simply because his works remind us of the classical times. The artist put himself in the Archeological Museum in the Collegiata at Casole d'Elsa, between the Master of the Maestà degli Aringhieri and the painter in the style of Duccio, in the forms of history and of memory after Esopo and Carpaccio, or between the Master of Monterotondo and Gano di Fazio in the Far Eastern and Western landscapes after the "Arabian Nights" and Cézanne, as well as the First Master of Lecceto and Domenico Michelino in the gas light and electricity of the open spaces and interiors after Edison and Flavin, or again between Neri di Bicci and Andrea dei Niccolò in the everyday appearance of the fresh themes and still-lives after Caravaggio and Braudel and then between Girolamo Pacchiarotti and Giovanni Della Robbia in the inevitability of life and art after Jesus Christ and Salvo.