Franco Paletta, painter and sculptor, was born in 1948 in Cetraro (CS), lives and works in Rende (CS). Graduated in Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts and in DAMS at the University of Calabria in Cosenza, he is currently professor of Ornamental Plastic at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. To his credit he has numerous personal and collective exhibitions, in Italy and abroad; his works are present in public and private collections. He is a lover of oriental philosophies: Yoga and Zen. He theorized and historicized the immaterial abstraction.
Intangible sculptures
Hollow luminous bodies, 1986- 2014-
If art is thought, and a destiny of thought guides the progress of forms in an attempt to free the contents of a new artistry, the work of Franco Paletta follows the evolution of an irreversible destiny - that of contemporary art - which it betrays an irresistible tendency to surpass itself in the dialectic of a dynamic, sculpture, which in itself tends towards completeness and absolute; and it is the place where the artist marks the passage from his intuitive essence to his philosophical essence.
It is a sculpture that frees itself in space by virtue of a principle that moves it and precise internal rules that allow the metamorphosis of a vague organic form into another, which evokes different meanings and symbols.
It is a shape modeled on planes and rhythmic scans centered on the simple movement of a line, sinuous and of subtle elegance which, in a sort of impregnable and light andante, performs numerous ellipses before freeing itself upwards in a rapid and rare verticalism.
In the end, the image is solitary, orderly and unique.
Animated by the need for essentiality, the artist purifies the form to reach the heights of absolute spirituality.
His sculpture is observed from the bottom up. It is a lucid construction, raised with a line that has in itself the principle of movement and thrust; so that it rises with a vital force similar to that of Gothic cathedrals, in which also a line, simple and vertical, is the informing and cognitive principle. What else can this internal rhythm, this climbing of planes be, if not the artist's very intimate need to overcome himself and to strive towards a daring spirituality?
It is a sculpture in which the iron material itself difficult to treat, smooth and polished, seems to be forgotten to the advantage of an energy that, by sprinkling it from within, illuminates it and distributes it in space in a neutral area in which it is plasticity of the volumes, the vigor of the sign and the fluttering of shadow and light are elements, therefore, secondary to the force that feeds it. On the other hand, the subtle absence of the material constitutes the work, which entrusts the task of replacing the rhetoric of the purely theatrical system to the rigor and internal tension, and therefore to the exquisite formal refinement. Something that ensures that the work does not come to be like a packaged product and that is ultimately resolved in the language within the very material constitution of the work.
A language aimed at rhythmic and propulsive exuberance that resolves the peculiarities of iron, weight and mass, in an imaginary that aspires to a sort of panic, universal integration. More than a form, then, Franco Paletta's sculpture - and drawing - seems to indicate a variety of possible forms in a multiplicity of structural elements. This is a rare avant-garde lesson. Gianfranco Labrosciano 13 August 1999
Painting
Vacuum bodies, 2007 - 2014
"The lost memory"
In today's society, technology reigns supreme and we are all involved in it and I would dare to say enslaved by it, there are those who think of building thinking machines to even replace our thoughts, our emotions, in other words put ourselves aside . I have always asked myself the problem of the lack of exercise of our memory, especially for the new generations. Having been in contact with young people for over forty years, as a teacher and also as a father, I experience this problem a lot. Every day I see how the children are neglecting the use of this great gift and to quote the great U. Eco, who urges the grandson to "learn things by heart". Football formations, poems, plots, history, works, recipes, etc. .. What is it for? Eco replies: to live a thousand lives, because those who have not cultivated their memory will have lived only one life, theirs, which should have been very melancholy and poor in great emotions ". I wonder: is it the fault of the "comforts" that our society makes available to us? Or will it be the fault of us parents that with a lax behavior, little or nothing responsible we unload our duties on others (the school in the first place)? . As a teacher, I am in direct contact with this youth who is all about the use and abuse of PCs, tablets, etc. and does not make the slightest effort to remember a date, a table, a street, etc. Now, in addition to teaching, I am also an artist who has long since entrusted my works with the task of "speaking for me". I created the "under vacuum" in 2009; they are works in which under the canvas I have hidden an object such as a brush, a book, a limb of the human body, and also an entire mannequin, a piece of wood, etc. Franco Paletta 13 February 2007.