Rotazione continua orizzontale

The project consists of an environmental intervention proposed by the artist for the facade of the Merate School of Maternity at the “Concorso Legge del 2% Scuola Materna (ente morale) di Merate” [Competition of the 2% Law for Merate nursery School], as indicated by Scaccabarozzi in a photograph reproducing the maquette he made, and probably entitled “Da un’idea del 69” [From an Idea of the 69], shown in the Collection by Mr. Antonio Spini of Robbiate. This project starts from the research held by Scaccabarozzi from the end of sixties and first half of seventies, and belongs to the series of Fustellati. These works come from the analysis of the movement in the relation between surface, depth, light and perception, in a space conceived as field of possible and potential variations. 
These paths, both conceptual both processual, bring the artist to realize works formed by a series of cylindrical elements obtained working with a hollow cutter and making on the neutral support modular elements, both emerging both hollow, of different and gradual dimension and extension.
Partially raised, inclined, orientated and colored, positioned in a rhythmic and sequential movement on the support itself, the Fustellati are an invitation to the eye and an incitement to the potentiality of perception. From that derives also the title of the project given by Scaccabarozzi for the nursery School of Merate in 1975: Rotazione continua orizzontale [Continous horizontal rotation]. From the analysis of the collage realized for the participation to the competition, the yellow completes and stresses the perceptive path of the cylindrical elements on the pictorial-environmental surface, thus intensifying the visual and cinetic-virtual potentialities of the project itself, if it would be realized.
Writing about this phase of the artistic research by Scaccabarozzi, in the monograph dedicated to the artist, in collaboration with the Archive and published in 2016 by Corraini, Flaminio Gualdoni stressed the double presence of “[…] the physical objectivity of the work and the physiology of perception, un-aestheticity compared to current expectations, the spectator’s active participation and complicity in the work as a facilitator of aesthetic expectation, a not decisively random situation: most of all, the strong and complete involvement of the temporal dimension in a process which, until that moment, one’s own evaluation system was based on the space and the psychological duration of the experience, rather than the physical […]”. (Gualdoni 2016, p. 43). 
The fact that this specific project was devoted to pre-school children emphasized the educational, ethical and aesthetic value given by Scaccabarozzi to his artistic works, and needs further reflection on his artistic intention about the principles and value of the game. Two years before his participation to this competition, questioned by Ernesto L. Francalanci and Paolo Cardazzo about the ludus component in his work, Scaccabarozzi responded succinctly: “I play with people who want to play for real/I play very seriously”. (Francalanci 1973, s.p.).
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