For the image of this 45th edition Folkest has chosen Accordi (oil on canvas, 2021, private collection Arch. Vita Pagliara) by Enzo De Giorgi, an artist who has made the colorful and almost fairy-tale-like narration of stories, emotions and people his stylistic signature, an artist for whom music has always been a central element of his creativity. Accordi paints a moment of ensemble music: four female figures each engaged in playing a different instrument and set in a fascinating interplay of shapes and colors. As the author himself explains, “We use the same words to talk about music and colors, and perhaps there is a secret agreement between the Arts: Chords, Assonances, Harmonies, Tonalities… are terms that are part of the same pictorial and musical dictionary.”
The ornate bell of a sound box envelops and amplifies the popular, boundless sounds that expand in the wind, like the long red hair of the young musicians. It is a vertical gyre: a cellist’s bow and fingers caress the vibrating strings of the instrument that accompanies the soft sound of a transverse flute and the high notes of a trumpet. The dry strokes, rolls or swipes of orchestral cymbals mark time and color the concert. It matters little, whether a folk group, a jazz orchestra or a marching band is playing: the importance of the visual message, simple, immediate and light, is that of a meeting, a celebration… of an agreement, warm and colorful like a strong embrace.
Enzo De Giorgi (Nizza Monferrato, 1968)
Born in Piedmont to parents from Salento, he trained in Lecce, first at the Art Institute, then at the local Academy of Fine Arts.
His artistic career is characterized by personal aesthetic research in the fields of painting, illustration, comics and sculpture that make him a multifaceted artist who, through different mediums, tells stories and emotions through images. Since 1996 he has combined art with teaching activities and currently teaches Graphic and Pictorial Disciplines at the Liceo artistico in Lecce. Music has always been part of his drawings: for Claudio Lolli he made the artwork of the album “Il grande freddo” (2017) and of the book “Disoccupate le strade dai sogni,” (2018).The subjects of his works are characters and landscapes within complex figurative compositions, hovering between dream and reality, myth and memory, expressions of an aesthetic poetics dominated by harmony, warm colors, soft and light strokes. The techniques he uses range from oil to tempera, acrylic to mixed media, but he also expresses himself through digital graphics for illustrations and projects for publishing houses, record labels and music festivals.