Nevio Boni
Dear Enzo,

I know that you know I know too, that your exhibition is an important event not only for you, as being your friend, it’s also important for me and for all those who love Art and for this city that has finally put an official seal on that immense love you feel for Turin.
It is useless hiding, behind your humble pride, Enzo.
The organization of the Piedmont Region is like a desired wedding holding emotions which are the real culprits for the acceptance of this monotony hidden in our days which are always the same.
You Enzo, offer many emotions with open arms. And your works stand there to express all of them. Describing emotions is a hard job. I who am an old reporter, know how difficult it is to tell them, today how to lay your artistic career bare, it scares me a little, because your growing talent has reached through time touching, signing, and reporting tormented vexations, insane violence, horrible faults but at the same time you have been able to open windows to let in the fresh air in the hope of a better life.
Certainly, Enzo, your deep themes concerning topics such as the existence of man, with his cowardly actions, with his insolence and oppressions. These topics almost lose their real meaning through their exhaustive repetitiveness in journalistic reports.
But when these emotions radiate from your sculptures, they inexorably sink daggers into the soft tissues of our souls.
What I’m saying Enzo is that even then you were able to foresee those great evils that still torment us nowadays, almost as if to say that we must never ignore them: we should never let tragedy to take the place of comedy otherwise we ourselves will become the jester of pain.
I feel that there is an attachment between your art and ourselves, or at least I hope there is and I think you would like there to be, too.
I saw the layout of your exhibition before it was put on show at the “Cavallerizza”, situated in Via Verdi. It portrayed a meticulous path through the 50 years of your artistic career. I had the privilege of seeing your latest works, arriving directly from the foundry and many others created in different materials. It catches your breath!
It’s all very well to admire the charm of metal that has just been polished, or the charm of smoothed marble, blazed and refined wood and the algid brightness of plexiglass, which all look magical: however it is not enough to justify their enchantment. In fact it seems as if you can hear silently cries from some of your figures which tug at your heart: it’s true life. As in your work “L’attesa” (The waiting) with its arms reaching out begging for just one simple good word. And what about the shivers provoked by the chaste bareness and untamed body of Aldo Moro since that tragic ninth of May 1978?
And then Enzo what about your little tightrope walkers, what about the children on their swings. They transmit dizziness, or when they are dangling from an unknown thread of a new world, or moreover when they are balancing on a wire which will lead them to the dream of a different life, far away from ignominy and wickedness?
And so I have dreamt for that longed-for peace and freedom travelling together with you and with that child riding a dove.
This is completely different from those angelic devils or demon angels served up for us on every day life videos.
It is true, I may have preserved a certain childhood naivety. But I’m convinced that I have to thank you because you have showed me through your limpid thoughts, your shadowy softness, your natural dignity and your continuous creative perseverance, an alternative path to a squalid, dull load of banality.
You have also flown high Enzo and you keep on flying with a lightness as if you knew the origins of things from up above. Your sculptures exhibited are a demonstration of this.
You have entitled one of your works: “La strada che da me conduce a me fa il giro del mondo” (The road that leads from me makes me go round the world). There Enzo, please give me your hand, so that I can find that road which from yourself leads to yourself, together we could travel round the world. And who knows maybe I will be able to find myself too.
Your friend, Nevio Boni.