Continuing its commitment to showcasing the architectural and industrial heritage of Boulogne, the city of Boulogne-Billancourt is presenting an exhibition of works by Alessandro Papetti - the last painter to visit the Renault factory on Île Seguin. Having previously painted the Fiat factories in Milan and the Rotterdam shipyards, Papetti sought to immortalize the final moments of this abandoned industrial stronghold.
In early 2004, he visited the site, taking numerous photographs and creating a multitude of sketches. Back in his studio in Milan, he captured the dramatic atmosphere of the location through his own distinctive style-characterized by vigorous, realistic brushwork.
The Italian painter Alessandro Papetti was born in Milan in 1958. He commenced his artistic career after classical studies and from 1980 to 1986 his first individual exhibitions made him known to his native city. He soon also received the recognition of critics, who dedicated him many articles, then catalogues, finally books. Apart from the portraits declaredly inspired by Bacon or Giacometti, his realistic researches have focused on atelier interiors, the traces left by time in churches, in shipyards and their dry docks, in blast furnaces or abandoned factories (his atelier, the churches of Milan, the Fiat factories, the shipyard of Rotterdam).
Since 1992 Papetti has studied in depth the theme of industrial archaeology, to some extent becoming one of the last Italian "landscapists" (or the first modern one) in the manner of Codazzi, Canaletto, Bellotto or Guardi. Like his famous ancestors, he has dedicated himself to panoramic representations of architectural views captured by an optic camera. Alessandro Papetti, equipped with a camera, as element of the present time, assimilates impressions that will nurture his pointing. But the universe of his large canvas is not that of gondola trips or Venetian skies. If we are to resort to the "History of Art", he should rather be compared to the immensely dramatic atmosphere of the works of Ganbattista Piranesi, who on the basis of the idea of perspective used for theater sets, has created extraordinary fantastic imageries, interpreting the relics of ancient Rome, not from a classical point of view but with a creative approach oriented towards romanticism.
This is the spirit inspiring Alessandro Papetti when he has, in 2004/2005, realized a series of large canvases centering on the Seguin Island, mythic site of the Renault plant in Billancourt: assembly lines, broken windows, abandoned ateliers, turbines that have come to a stop, the factory seen from the Seine like a sunk ocean liner. To those who have spent time here, the effect is shattering. With the free, sparse brushstrokes of a true master, the artist seems to have painted rapidly, covering the canvas with quick movements. The places are recognizable, but the painter is not content with a mere clinic observation of the objects, or a trendy hyperrealism, always spectacular but often superficial. He has succeeded in rendering the spirit and soul of these places of work and life, that are now deserted. Certainly, as a critic pointed out in a catalogue dedicated to him, there is something called "distress of painting", or in other words a malaise (or disillusion?) of painting, the fact of only being able to show, and not to speak. But it is evident that nothing is superfluous, that the artist's choices of those motifs, the charm they wield, are themselves eloquent, telling us about their anguish before the passing of time and human folly.
The model factories with assembly lines that once produced thousands of cars are today ghost ships; their workers are lost, missing. The great industry has never treated them lightly, and the cities banish the last remaining ones, further and further away. The pulsating, rapid touch of Alessandro Papetti, with its distinctive poetic, almost romantic atmosphere, placed against a monochrome blue background, paradoxically underscores the effect of the silence, that covers the large factory spaces, where the machines used to hum, like a layer of molten lead.
Whether he wants to or not, an artist is always a witness. Some time ago we asked Pierre-Yves Gervais to paint the electric turbines of the movie studio of Billancourt. Today these paintings are the only surviving visual testimonial of those mythical places, where the greatest French movies were shot. We have called painting to the rescue, or rather to sustain history.
A felicitous combination of circumstances has enabled Alessandro Papetti to be the last painter to explore the Seguin Island, the emblematic site of the history of Renault. The decision was the artist's own. The reputation of the site, the debate on its conservation, crossed the Alps and made him take an interest in these elements of architecture, bound for extinction.
His powerful and evocative work, with the about thirty canvases presented at the Musée des Années 30, today witness his personality as an artist and the memory transmitted by the force of his art.
Emmanuel Bréon
Head curator of Musée des Années 30, Boulogne-Billancourt
