Guido Seborga
Visiting enzo sciavolino’s studio

Tired of listening to words that were limited to mere pitiful technicalism and intended for frivolous and formal games; looking at pictures and sculptures shrunken to technical “REALISM” that is sickening and rudimentary in a society that is becoming more and more ambiguous and dying of automatization, where the shaky cosmopolitan characteristic is similar to the technique devouring science. One evening while I was roaming round the streets that were excessively wide, empty and full to excess in an age of bolt turners. I met Enzo Sciavolino in an imposing square that looked like a verse coming from a scholar lacking in a true and deep culture. I had met Enzo Sciavolino’s several years before at an exhibition where some of his sculptures had been displayed. His works had interested me and I had looked at them attentively. We ended up in his studio in a tranquil cellar in a house in an art nouveau style, that proved Turin had its centuries old bourgeoisie, children directly descended from the enlightened Cavour, a prudent administrator and politician, if Einaudi and Gobetti were around, so unheeded by the multitude of politicians. In fact, there is a lack of history in the world and structuralism is in abundance and in fact, even the most distinguished professors at Foucault and the various autarkic young and inexperienced professors may conclude their sad lives as mannequins and be put in a whitened sepulchre.
In fact, mannequins and robots disgust me. The robot that steers the factory has become a reality in countries that are named developing and… futuristically speaking, we may imagine that we will work two hours a day and rest the whole time, they are offering us, terrestrial paradise, but only in words?
But why is it that the avant-garde forgets about sex the whole time, inhibited and weak as they are, they need a machine to strengthen and prolong man’s life…
And I synthesized all of this in my mind while I was walking through the various rooms in Enzo Sciavolino’s cellar.
And I immediately felt relieved when looking at the plastic forms that were new and alive and my whole being deeply felt the effect.
He is young, his more exterior forms were recent, but research into the sculptural plastic that was not spoilt or wasted had been carried out attentively before hand, due to his golden thumb and his gifted hand that works according to the strength and intensity of the material that is never discarded but always recovered and checked.
It is just like maturation that arrives and accomplishes hour after hour, it is always better to break up and abolish time - his human figures made up of manifold forms that may be fully united to other human figures spring ahead in a clear perspective that changes; at times a monument, or an architectonic construction. A whole range of varieties going from dramatic to intimate are compressed and the interior spaces open up into space and become manifest. And then there are some smaller sculptures (treasured objects that may be placed on a bedside table) that resemble marine vegetation at times; or striking forms pertaining to poetical matter that find their ideas in an integral reality.
This ideological and utopian resumption that is steadfast and secure compared to a world made up of mechanical puppets is assuring. The emaciated and assuring lacerated figure of present humanity, in individual and collective dialectical terms, has never been an accomplice to myths or rhetoric.

Turin May 1967