He made himself a violin of glass because
he wanted to see the music.
Wisława Szymborska

An exemplary exhibition
Had the recent Prime-Ministerial decree (DPCM) for containing the spread of Covid not forced the closure of museums, one could at present view, at the Museum of the “P. Vannucci” Academy of Fine Arts in Perugia and in the Hall of the Farnese Hercules of that prestigious artistic institution, the latest labours of the artist Giuliano Giuman. A significant exhibition which, coming at the close of a long creative journey, we think it worthwhile in reconstructing, in part, the career of this Umbrian artist, who has made his mark on the international scene through his unconventional and masterly use of glass as his medium of choice.
The exhibition, of which we present a few images here, does indeed show a cycle of works that blend materials, concepts and poetic intimations that have accompanied the artist across his decades-long career.

Itineraries
Giuman made his debut at twenty with oil paintings on canvas (1964/1988 – after 2016); he then began investigations into and with photography (1974/1987 – after 2018); later he specialised in grand-feu painting on glass (from 1986 to the present), which became his material of choice; then came the practice and use of video (from 1975 to the present) and the use of light as the sculptress of installation-works and backlit glass (from 1977 to the present). In short, a journey among the most diverse expressive means and the various technologies, used nonetheless coherently to create, to my way of seeing, works strongly marked by a halo effect or, as I like to put it, a “reverberation” effect. But we shall come to that.

Quoting, and self-quoting

The works in the aforementioned exhibition Classico Futuro [Classical Future], all made recently, draw on quotation to a considerable degree. In them Giuman indeed sometimes directly inserts photographic fragments of the works (for the most part plaster copies of originals) held in the museum of the Academy that hosts him (fig. 3). The reference may also appear in a non-explicit way. It may be, as in many cases with the works installed directly among the Museum's holdings, a formal allusion, an echo or a recall of colours, forms and concepts (fig. 4).
Even more, though, he seems to quote himself when, within a single work, he condenses the artistic practices he himself has widely explored in the preceding decades.
Such is the case with the works made for the Academy's Hall of the Farnese Hercules. One above all: Da Bertel Thorvaldsen [After Bertel Thorvaldsen] (figs. 5–6) is a work composed of three different surfaces laid one over another.

A first layer of oil on canvas lends the surface the classic weave and body of textile matter; a second, photographic layer presents a detail of the copy of Thorvaldsen's work; and finally a third layer of grand-feu painting on glass (a complex technique that involves fixing the colour, at extremely high temperatures, to the incandescent magma of the sand) gives the surface that characteristic brilliance and luminescence which distinguishes Giuman's works.
The three layers, though forming a single whole, nonetheless disclose themselves in different ways according to the light. By day, the compact core of the work appears as a surface that is indeed complex and rich in planes (as can be gathered, too, from the almost sculptural edge of the picture), yet it looks like a vaguely informal, abstract contrivance of colours and forms (fig. 5). By night, or in any case when, by means of a timer device, the light goes off and the surfaces are backlit, the works let the photograph emerge before all else, the testimony of the museum's work, smothering the colours of the canvases in shadow and opacity (fig. 6).

Reverberations

Looking at Giuman's works, the word reverberation sprouted in my mind. I had taken it up merely as a descriptor, gazing at the blaze of light in the glass of his installations. But words sometimes have a surprising semantic density that widens the very sense of the thought that generated them. So I did some research and uncovered connections and fascinations that this word carries, and which, I think, may be annexed to many of Giuman's works as well.
Reverberation, then, is a dazzling reflection of light. A colour or a sound so intense that, precisely by its intensity, it creates an indistinct aura all around. There: I think that when Giuman set himself to work with glass, he did so in some way precisely for that quality, intrinsic to the material, of heightening colours with that play of fugitive brilliances.
But reverberation is also bound up with reflection, with deviation. Paradoxically it is an emphasis that hides, confounds, dazzles and therefore withholds from sight. Giuman too seems to me at times to attempt, with his works, to bestow a subtraction by way of excess. He adds, aggregates, superimposes, but in so doing he takes away detail. He renders everything apparently transparent with those darts of glass that refract lights (and shadows). Glass forms a barrier, fragile, yet ineluctably dividing, against the skin of the world.
In music (sound, moreover, is present in Giuman's exhibition and in many of his works), reverberation alludes to an acoustic phenomenon that serves to lend a sound greater depth, but also to create delay and phase-shift. There it is: another metaphor for this artist's paradoxical way of giving light and masking at one and the same time. In his work the lights, the shadows, the darts of colour play in refraction, hiding or revealing at the very same instant. Everything is there, yet transparent and “dazzled”, as if to remind us of the limpid mystery of all things which, in giving themselves, in truth cast a shadow behind them.

Experiments

Bruno Munari, that many-sided figure of Milanese artist and theorist, for a solo show by Giuman in Brescia in February of that distant 1975, wrote an introduction that shrewdly concluded thus: “… but what is all this for? We shall see at the end of the experiments. (…) A true researcher never asks what it is for; it will be seen afterwards, if the experiment has been well conducted, and what results it has yielded.”
So then, what does Giuman's work mean? What sense is there in this prattle of mine about reverberations and echoes? About an exhibition that quotes, alludes, evokes, even amid the most unbridled invention? Perhaps nothing other than an intimation of reality: opaque, uncertain, manifold, yet enchanted.
In any case, it will be seen. Classico Futuro: a long career of experimentation to Giuliano Giuman.
I close with a wish for the community. That the museums may reopen, together with the hairdressers. So that, besides a well-groomed head, there may be the chance to make heads that think. And that you may soon return to see Giuman's exhibition too, and the astonishing Museum of the Academy which he himself, when he was Director of that Institution (yes, indeed), helped to bring into being.
As for me: I would like to ask the management to switch off the timer that now governs the exhibition's lights, and to grant free access to the show by day and by night, so as to enjoy the works in conditions of natural light and time. It must be beautiful and poetic to await the right moment. In the morning, to gaze at those surfaces of abstract, brilliant colours. At night, to walk in the dark and discover that behind the glory of the primary colours there lay quotations and echoes of works: shreds of Graces, of Venuses, of Hercules and Marriages of the Virgin.
To discover Giuman who, by quoting quotations, makes the real (dis)colour, giving us its dream. In reverberation.

Giuliano Giuman
Giuliano Giuman was born in Perugia in 1944. At twenty he began to paint, following the teachings of Gerardo Dottori, his first master. He has won many important national competitions for buildings of the Italian State. From 1998 to 2013 he taught “Stained-glass Technique” at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. From 2009 to 2012 he was director of the “Pietro Vannucci” Academy of Fine Arts in Perugia, where he promoted the reopening of the museum and set up the School of Design. He has held more than 100 solo exhibitions and 200 group shows, in museums, galleries and public spaces in Italy and abroad.

The Museum of the Academy of Perugia
The heritage of the “Pietro Vannucci” Academy of Fine Arts Foundation comprises some 600 plaster casts, 430 paintings, 12,000 drawings and 6,300 engravings. For the most part copies of originals, these materials served as study models for the artists who came to learn their art at the Academy. In 2012 the centuries-old existence of the Perugia Academy of Fine Arts took on new life, thanks to a rearrangement of the works and a reopening to the public that came about precisely under the direction of Giuliano Giuman. Among the plaster casts, exceptional in craftsmanship and variety, stand out the gigantic Farnese Hercules, the Boxer Damoxenos, Antonio Canova's Cupid and Psyche and The Three Graces (an original copy donated by the artist), the Laocoön and Bertel Thorvaldsen's Young Shepherd. Among the paintings, notable are the Self-portrait with Parrot by Mariano Guardabassi and pictures by Annibale Brugnoli, Domenico Bruschi, Armando Spadini, Mario Mafai, Alberto Burri and Gerardo Dottori.

Classico Futuro
The exhibition Classico Futuro by the artist Giuliano Giuman opened to the public on 17 October 2020 and will run until 6 January 2021, in the hope of a swift reopening of the exhibition spaces.
The exhibition itinerary, curated by Aldo Iori and Giovanni Manuali, opens in the new Hall of the Farnese Hercules and continues through the rooms of the Museum of the Academy. The exhibition, when and if we reopen our doors having overcome the Covid emergency, will be open during the Museum's opening hours: Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 3 to 6 p.m. and also by appointment on 340.4778575. Admission is free in the Hall of the Farnese Hercules, with a ticket for the Museum.

Mara Predicatori
A curator and pedagogist, following studies in art and in psychology and pedagogy she took up work both in the promotion and curating of exhibitions and in training for a broad spectrum of audiences. From 2003 to the present she has held curatorial roles at the Trevi Flash Art Museum of International Contemporary Art (now called the Palazzo Lucarini Contemporary Art Center), also fulfilling the role of head of educational activities. A primary-school teacher, she is also a lecturer in Pedagogy and Didactics of Art and in Didactics of Artistic Languages at the Academy of Fine Arts in Perugia. At the same time she has worked, and continues to work, as a consultant for public and private institutions on the themes of the didactics of artistic languages and museum education. She has designed and led advanced-training courses and master's programmes for experts in the didactics of art and of the territory for the Umbria Region, and has been and remains a point of reference for community projects of educational exchange and artistic promotion (LLP Grundtvig and Erasmus+). She pursues a searching reflection on artistic and educational practices of a more markedly social engagement, and on a valorisation of the territory that passes through unconventional practices bound up with contemporary artistic languages (#Chiaveumbra).