Salvatore Pica or, the Talent of the Talent Scout
By Luigi Caramiello
This contribution is especially dedicated to Salvatore Pica and to the new space he has set up devoted to cultural output and diffusion - a brand new creative territory. “Picagallery”, alongside cultural initiatives of an established and recognised value, specialises in offering early works from artists who are setting out to expose their work to the public for the first time. This shouldn’t come as a surprise; this has always been Salvatore Pica’s business. I have known him for more than 35 years and I have lost count of the times that I have witnessed the birth of an artist, of a person of culture, of an academic, under the auspices of old Pica.
Salvatore Pica should not be confused in any way with some sort of producer of “questionable dilettanti”. Far from it, Pica’s workshop has for years been one of enormous value, a veritable hothouse of talent, professionalism and quality. I don’t want to mention names, so as not to upset anybody, otherwise I would have to draw up an endless list, but just look at the artists, intellectuals and scientists who have held their first exhibition, their first lecture, their first debate at Pica’s place, go see how many have had their first publication, printed their first book, thanks to Pica who was their first intelligent reader and you’ll find the best names in modern day Neapolitan culture. In short, how many creative people from our broad geographic domain, have found in Pica a supporter, an alert observer, a sponsor, an advisor or simply, something that is perhaps even more important, a friend? Believe me, there are very many of them. I know something about it.
Over this long period of cultural liveliness and creative stagnation, of impulse and boredom, of enthusiasm and indifference, of engagement and detachment, of revolution and reaction, Salvatore Pica has represented in a certain sense a fixed point, a man, I should rather say an institution, capable of preserving memory, but at the same time, when required, of forgetting. Capable, that is to say, of storing in the mind and heart whatever merits it, whatever still retains importance and value, but also of consigning to just oblivion whatever no longer makes sense or which has been revealed or discovered to have a distorted meaning.
Pica has been capable of changing, of weathering the vicissitudes of time, while maintaining a pragmatic continuity of imagination. If from the 60’s onwards to talk about new design in Naples meant talking about Pica and his “Ellisse” centre, in the 80’s, with the encouragement of the Accademia della Catastrofe of which he was a vital pillar, he became the “man of the night”. Some of the most insanely exuberant moments of the new Neapolitan entertainment were identified with his name.
His natural “funniness”, scathing and occasionally even bitter, displays itself throughout these years in a humorous, satirical journalism that interprets, sometimes ruthlessly but always through the lens of playfulness, the customs and traditions of a certain Naples. As may be seen in several amusing and enjoyable books, not lacking in stinging irony, written around this time.
In the most recent phase Pica created his new gallery in Via Vetriera, which quickly became a reference point for various creative activities in the field of the visual arts and beyond, involving old glories, confirmed masters and emerging youngsters. It is evident that Pica’s career path has been varied and pluralist, but all the same notable for its strand of continuity - an instinct for the new, for transformations, for changes, for whatever appears unexpectedly and whatever offers renewal: therefore, naturally, for the young. Pica’s most characteristic “métier” is giving an opportunity to young and emergent talent; I put the word in inverted commas because Salvatore with his adventures in culture has rarely made much out of it, let us even say that most of the time he has made a loss. But his appetite for the role of talent scout is a pleasure he cannot imagine, does not wish to, and never could, renounce. In this sense it is not difficult to understand why and how the ‘first work’ should be the essential index, the fundamental object that demands his interest and his attention.
A first provisional assessment of these years tells us that Salvatore has done a really good job. We are sure that he will continue yet a while; we are absolutely certain that the old Pica will not lose his enthusiasm or his emotional charge, and that his cultural commitment will manifest itself in the same eccentric, atypical, unusual, creative direction, outside all opportunistic stratagems, unaffected by all rationalisations of convenience, immune to easy conformism, at a remove from obsequious ritual, but always in search of the new, of the “discovery” of something. Something that will make us view the world once more with childlike wonder. Thank you Pica, thank you my friend, for your discoveries, for your surprises. Many of us await several more to come.