THE NEW GENERATION: GIUSEPPE D'AURIA

It is generally known, now that when you speak of the intellectual art as a mind's will, you exclusively refer to the «new generation». And it is undeniable that during the last thirty years the Italian painting in particular has reached remarkable levels through a vanguard school which has a considerable importance in the artistic background nowadays.
if you watch the scene of the Italian contemporary painting carefully, you will notice at once that there is a clear-cut distinction among the different generations of artists. That is to say, in Germany and in Italy. As well as in England. The age has a fundamental importance: and also considering some possible influences and contacts of secondary importance, the division of the artists according lo a chronological scheme is a generally accepted practice now.
As a matter of fact, the painters are grouped into three great categories: the «pre-war» generation; the so called «middle» generation and the «new generation», which groups painters born between 1928 and 1940, most of them coming from the same schools and all of then, yet with different tendencies, sharing the same cultural background. Undoubtedly, it is this group that plays a fundamental role in the artistic scene of our country. Giuseppe D'Auria is one of the protagonists of the «new generation», even though the word «protagonist» sounds too strong if referred to this artist. As matter of fact. He is a forerunner who has never propagandised his precocious concepts too aloud, as this is the critic task.
The artistic world of this painter, which had its first expression during the sixties and has been brought forward in the same way until today, is based on a complex culture of colours, which is mostly employed (in different cycles, of course) as a basic theme. The starting point is often an experience of nature, a «cosmic» adventure, in which all the phenomena are interconnected.
The artist's works witness his individual point of view. It is an art of thought, aiming at changing life, in an age in which the tradition of Italian culture seems deprived of its contents, values and morals, and a change is thus extremely necessary. He announces time when the world and the immediate reality themselves will become the objects of a transformation for all men.
To this purpose, my interpretation of his works differs from the ones that many «colleagues», whose work I do respect,
Have suggested to the observers who, free from any form of dogmatism, come to a complete understanding of the contemporary art, without considering it as a mere succession of particular styles.
In the predominant (changing) activity of an age which finds its expression in (changing) themes which sect" to me legitimate, Giuseppe D'Auria widens the frontiers of art as well as his individual position through «the new generation».
His works cannot be considered as classic examples of «subjective expression of interior life» indeed, but this is because he quietly questions the definitions of faith and of moral justifications.
Undoubtedly, he is an attentive and informed observer of the contemporary artistic scene, and not an ingenuous spectator. And it is just for «his awareness» that art cannot be confused with simulations or false vanguard attitudes.
He does not try the forms, the materials, the acquired liberties; he does not shatter the canons of the «artistic night»; he does not beget all the eccentricities deriving from the fever of our rhythms of life.
His extraordinary peculiarity does not lie in what he realizes, bit rather in the fact that his works are signs, calls to the universal love. What is extraordinary is the power of the truth based on reasoning; that truth that makes us understand and enjoy the different meanings of things. A new «reasoned» balance among time, man, we ourselves and... God.
This is perhaps the strange destiny of the one who has dimly seen the path of justice and truth, which all men should be called to. Were this conclusion really accepted, it would be great and amazing. But it is necessary to take into account two today's dangers: the former is to let people consider obvious and expected what is not, since this requires a serious, compromising and decisive choice to be carried out; the latter is to fall in the trap of those who, to get rid of a problem, speak about it so much as to stir up nausea and then indifference.
But the truths are eternal, even though the historical fashions pretend to make them modem, advanced and out of fashion. The real spirit of will has always existed in the sensibility of those who do things only because they have to be done. Shortly, in the sensibility of those who have realized that both truth and justice cannot be found on the stalls of art.
There are artists who like inventing the «evident», and, even better, there are those who like making evident what are not. I do not mistake the truth for the real: art really exist, but it is no more true, while D'Auria's «verities» are not only real, but also true: the truth shows a new way of approaching reality, which is no more intended as something limitating the sphere of the individual thought, but as an essential part of it, in which the artist's thought can influence the artistic word: the attempt of paying off a debt with the history of men.
It is not presumptuous to affirm that Giuseppe D'Auria even revealing the urgency of the transformation, does not escape this world, but he sees and shows it, and he compels us to look at it as something that needs «presenting» and not to «represent» the love of the new life.
Driven by a stranger passion than egoism, he spreads and leaves his message as a renewal of the sensations and not as a hedonistic flight from the world and life.
So, it is impossible to avoid and forget it, as this would mean to avoid and forget a part of the world. In the perspective or the artistic production, one has to take into account the fact that actions and words, ideas and events must necessarily coincide. To this purpose, Giuseppe D'Auria opens the door, hill of promises, beauties and prophecies, to the immediate future, as a key to all futures. Whether you like or not, Giuseppe D'Auria is a meaningful representative in the historical perspective of the Italian contemporary art (and not only Italian), that both thinkers and creators have defined as «the new generation>), by means of which one has been able to conceive the artistic and intellectual activity as a mind's will.

Paolo Olindo Giusti