Romeo Castellucci
1960 (Cesena Italie)
Refusing the word or inventing a universal language (the Generalissima), opposing humanity to animality (introducing on stage sheep, goats and baboons for La Discesa di Inanna or a white bull for Moses and Aaron), dividing between rhetorical actions in non-theatrical places and plastic stagings of great texts, the Societas invents a visual dramaturgy that plunges the spectator into the frightening, the sublime, the monstrous and the magnificent. If he asserts that he was "found" by the theater - the most primitive form of art according to him, which "was born the same day the last god died" - Castellucci undoubtedly comes from the world of art. And he resolutely returns to it. "As a teenager, I was a hooligan. When my sister, urged on by my father, went to study at the Beaux-Arts in Bologna, I began to leaf through one of her art history books and I was struck by lightning. I totally changed my way of life and threw myself into the study of art history. When I entered the churches of small villages, I saw for the first time paintings of naked bodies, tortured, suffering but also joyful, capable of bringing enjoyment. At the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, which was then at the forefront of the avant-garde, I began to make paintings, drawings, sculptures and performances. Even today, I tremble every time I enter a museum, because I have kept a carnal relationship with classical painting."
©salva Filippov
Refusing the word or inventing a universal language (the Generalissima), opposing humanity to animality (introducing on stage sheep, goats and baboons for La Discesa di Inanna or a white bull for Moses and Aaron), dividing between rhetorical actions in non-theatrical places and plastic stagings of great texts, the Societas invents a visual dramaturgy that plunges the spectator into the frightening, the sublime, the monstrous and the magnificent. If he asserts that he was "found" by the theater - the most primitive form of art according to him, which "was born the same day the last god died" - Castellucci undoubtedly comes from the world of art. And he resolutely returns to it. "As a teenager, I was a hooligan. When my sister, urged on by my father, went to study at the Beaux-Arts in Bologna, I began to leaf through one of her art history books and I was struck by lightning. I totally changed my way of life and threw myself into the study of art history. When I entered the churches of small villages, I saw for the first time paintings of naked bodies, tortured, suffering but also joyful, capable of bringing enjoyment. At the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, which was then at the forefront of the avant-garde, I began to make paintings, drawings, sculptures and performances. Even today, I tremble every time I enter a museum, because I have kept a carnal relationship with classical painting."
©salva Filippov
