| The
Bugatti 35Type dominated the young world of the car races from 1927 to 1931 and,
afterward, has become a real myth. Therefore I decided to dedicate a picture to
this model, without referring to a given situation or to a peculiar model, just
to underline its symbolic aspect. The car is swinging round a curve getting out
from a little town in the south of Italy, where people were waiting for the car
race for a long time, as newspapers and radio had loudly announced it. Such events,
actually, were amplified by the Fascist government of the time, as symbol of the
modernity of the country. In the square, therefore, there is the whole community:
the "podestà" in formal dress, the notables, the young and the town elders, the
fathers with their sons and the inevitable "carabiniere". People are arriving
even from the countryside to watch the passing of those racing cars coming from
far-off cities. The Bugatti looks like a comet, with its "tail" of red dust and
stones. The car driver and the navigator don't even see the crowd, they are entirely
absorbed in swinging round at their best the difficult bend, now even more demanding
because of the recent rain. The picture of the car is in high and very contrasted
colours and shows a richness of details. Vice versa, the landscape is drown in
pastel tones and is less defined in order to emphasize the difference between
two worlds: town and countryside, standstill and speed, tradition and technological
research, nature and machine. To underline still further this sensation, the two
persons in the car are bending so to swing round the curve in the opposite direction
of the crowd, as if they wanted escape from a world that the age of the technology
is fast dissolving. This picture is an homage paid to the T35, and even to its
maker Ettore Bugatti. He played a leading role in the world of the motor racing,
but he was also very close to the artistic world. Son of Carlo, painter and furniture
designer, he himself attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. 120 years after
his birth, I wanted to sum up on the canvas these two aspects of an important
figure who marked the technical culture of the 20th-century.
Andrea
Del Pesco - March 2001 |
