Versus

For Dorazio, what we find in Versus is the meaning of painting, which “must represent nothing other than its constituent elements: colours, lines, surfaces, materials, timbres, movement, light and shadow, quick and slow, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, hot and cold – in short, all the phenomena that orient our everyday existence most directly. […] Every painting of mine represents a state of tension. I paint in order to transmit vital energy with no mockup. One stripe after another and I leave the viewer to pick up the vibrations of these bands.” (APPELLA, 1983, p. 13) The artist is therefore first of all a kind of medium who experiences the world in its essence in an attempt to communicate it. With this aim, Dorazio seeks to become the intermediary of the “transfers of energy” that he regards as the constituent elements of reality. Thus, for example, he chooses colours “as bees do with flowers” through “sensitive succession” with no reference to restrictive theories that deny the expressive freedom which the artist must champion (ibid., pp 14-15).(Transl. by Paul Metcalfe per Scriptum, Roma) BIBL: G.APPELLA, Colloquio con Dorazio, Roma 1983.