STUDYING ART IN FIRENZE IN THE EIGHTIES

After having followed the Rietveld Akademie and Rijksacademie in Amsterdam, I left for Firenze, Italy with a scholarship in 1980. I had received the scholarship from the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno (according to themselves it is the oldest Academy in the world).

This was the first time I went to live abroad for a long period of time. As a preparation I had gone on holidays to Firenze the summer before. The holidays had been nice. I visited many museums, learned to eat spaghetti and ate a lot of ice cream.

I studied Italian at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura per i Paesi Bassi in Amsterdam.

And I asked around if any of my friends knew people in Firenze.

One friend provided me with two ‘sources’. A Dutch friend of hers lived there and the other contact was a guy called Erik Roos. She did not really know him. Erik gave me a series of addresses and phone numbers of friends and told me that one of them, Gianni, was a real nice person.

Although the school year started at the end of September, I arrived in the beginning of August. I wanted to prepare everything well.

I had the address of the academy and wanted to let them know I had arrived. And I had to find a place to live.

The first period I lived in the pension with the beautiful name ‘La Mia Casa’ (My house).

I went to the Accademia delle Belle Arti in via Ricasoli. Many famous painters had studied there. To name some of them: Modigliani, Marini, Rosai, Boldini, Fattori and Annigioni.

I arrived at the administration, a window underneath a copy of a Deposition of Raffaello Sanzio.  The lady searched in the papers for my name, but could not find it. This had to be a misunderstanding. I insisted; the lady went over the papers once again without any result. Some of my enthusiastic future colleagues started to pinch me in the back and so I left.

I contacted the home front and was given an address of a door without doorknob or bell in a wall without windows, then another that did not make any sense either. Finally I found the right address of this mysterious Academy in the phonebook. It was located next to the Orsan Michele in a historical and beautiful palace.

For five days I rang the bell without any sign of life, but at the sixth a window on the top floor opened, a lady looked down and said nobody was present. I continued to ring and finally the lady came at the door. Il direttore was in Rome and only expected back in two weeks.

After those two weeks I managed to make an appointment. The Dutch friend accompanied me as a translator.

Il direttore was an important man. Rodolfo Siviero had brought by the Germans stolen paintings back after the Second World War.

He held the slides of some of my works against the light and looked at them faking interest. He saw the Flemish Style shining through. No doubt the Northern European School. Il direttore explained that the Accademia consisted of a group of famous artists. They decided about the cultural direction that had to be followed in Firenze, but there were no classrooms, no students, nor professors in the building.

After having given it some thought he decided the put me under the protection of the illustrious maestro Collacicchi.

He gave me address and phone number and an appointment was made. I arrived at the house just outside Firenze and was greeted by the wife of the artist and a big white dog. She immediately told me that I was welcome. Normally the dog would attack a visitor, but he really liked me. Unfortunately the maestro was not at home, so she showed me the dream study.

I was told to come back the next week.

And so I did. The dog was happy to see me again, but the maestro was not amused. Although he did not paint anymore (his wife had sadly confessed this to me), it was not possible for me to work in his studio, not even in a small and dark angle.

So back to the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno. Il direttore Siviero this time found it the best solution that I’d go to the Accademia delle Belle Arti.

An appointment with the direttore of the accademia was made. I went again accompanied by my translator to see Silvio Loffredo.

After all this time winter had arrived and we found the direttore behind an enormous desk. At his feet and both sides of his chair stood electric heaters. Patiently he listened to my wishes. He too looked at my slides and recognized the Flemish School in the works…

It was not easy for him to look at the slides. He smoked a cigarette and wanted to keep the ash cone in one piece. He held the cigarette in a vertical position and smoked very carefully.

The famous professore Breddo seemed the only right person for to help me develop my talents. During our visit one of the two phones on his desk rang. He took the receiver of the hook, but the wire was stuck behind the other phone. After some careful maneuvering accompanied by heavy sighs (the ash cone had to be saved!), he managed to answer the call. My friend and I avoided looking at each other…

Not much later the vice direttore rushed in. He told Loffredo that all students were working hard on their examines, so it seemed best for him to go home. Luckily the ash cone stayed intact even when on leaving the vice direttore slammed the door. This made the direttore comment to us with a heavy sigh: ‘ You see under which harsh conditions I have to protect and stimulate the Arts?’

The next day I went to my new classroom in the best of moods. I was one of the first to arrive. The assistant was informed about me and accompanied my to an easel with a good view on the still to arrive model.

He was very enthusiastic. A Dutch student! He wore spectacles with lenses that were as thick as gin glasses. He whispered to me that he was writing a book about a very famous Dutch painter. Vincent van Gogh!

Every day he wrote ten pages and if I knew what that meant… A hundred pages in ten days!

Slowly the students arrived. The model climbed on the podium and stroke a pose. He continued greeting the arriving students, so he did not sit very still.

But I have to say; it was a cozy scene. It became even cozier when the professore arrived accompanied by his greyhound. Professore Breddo talked with a slight French accent. He had lived in Paris for a while. He introduced me to all the great talents he protected and nourished. How I managed to make a drawing that day was a miracle.

After a week I could no more. For the last two years in Amsterdam I had painted morning, afternoon and night and with the most beautiful models who sat still.

Here the days went by chatting and even the model participated. This could be nice for learning Italian, but it did not provide any possibilities for making progress in painting.

Gianni (the friend of whom I was given the address by Rik Roos) came with the solution. In the mornings I could work in his studio. I was not to change things around, but I could listen to the many cassettes with operas he had. In his studio I got addicted to operas…

And there was the Scuola Libera del Nudo. Under the careful guidance of professors artists could paint with models for free. One had to pass an examen before. I passed and worked with a model named Lea for a while. She had the worst mood in the world, but sat still. After a couple of days she discovered that the chimney of the heater leaked. A thin line of smoke came from it and so she decided to go on strike. Some days went by without a model. And then Paolo arrived. He was a young man with a body like an Apollo. He took modeling serious; I could work!

But even there the lessons did not always pass by uninterrupted. The professor was a nice quiet guy and his assistant was a bit funny, but no nuisance. He painted female fantasy portraits and instead of the eyes, the nose and the mouth, he painted a vagina on the scalp. That was it, I thought.

And then half way the first month an old man would come in accompanied by his wife. He would place himself in the middle of the half circle of easels that were grouped around the model. He would break into long speeches. Of many of his stories I could not understand the meaning. My Italian was still insufficient and I was working.

One story he told quite often, so in the end I knew what it was about. When he was living in Paris during a cold winter, he leant his coat to Picasso and never got it back. To show that that story was true, he asked his wife if she remembered. She did…

She sat at a table aside, reading gossip magazines and agreed on any story he told.

At one point I asked a fellow student why he did not work. She said that he was a professor. We had two, not one, two and an assistant.

Rinaldo Burattin (that was his name) would pass by all the easels to have a critical look. He discovered me and said more than once that he liked what I did. After a couple of weeks he declared that I had the special honor to donate one of my works to the illustrious school. Which drawing I would donate, I could decide for myself.

I gave him one and the next day I found it taped to the wall. At the bottom, next to my signature (I sign with ‘bert’) in Baroque letters he had written a comment. It went something like this: ‘… The joyful meandering of lines, the refined use of chiaro/scuro show a solid education based upon the Splendid Flemish School. To name some: Breughel, Bosch, Rubens and Rembrandt; their echoes can be found in this drawing. This Artist is a great promise for the future…’

That same day, after the first quiet thirty minutes he proudly entered the room followed by his spouse. In the exact center of the half circle he stretched out his arm, opened his hand and said in a loud voice: ‘Best!’

I did not understand and looked around me. He never spoke to me again, nor looked at my work.

This turned out to be a lucky thing. From a fellow student I heard that if he had decided to see you as a disciple, you would have the doubtful honor to portray his wife. And if you did not make her look forty years younger, it was war.

The Scuola Libera del Nudo saved me once from a bad experience.

I am not very handy with the official institutions. So I had no residence permit. But I had a Vespa!

One unfortunate night two policemen stopped me. Everything was in order with the Vespa, the lights worked, I was allowed to have one of such little cilinder capacity, nor had I jumped a red light. It was just a routine search.

They were the perfect team. One was the serious one; the other played the friendly cop. I had done nothing wrong, no worries. But who I was and what I did for a living. I answered (telling the truth), that I was living in Firenze with an international scholarship. I did not have any papers on me to prove so.

And what did I study? Art! And where? At the Scuola Libera del Nudo (the Free School of the Nude)!

One officer disappeared neighing between two parked cars. The other summoned me with a extremely serious look on his face, that I had to swear on my mothers name, that the next morning I would immediately go to the Foreign Police Office to get the permit. I solemnly promised to do so…

I am an honest man, but with a little reluctance. The next day I went to the office and found two sort of mobs standing in front if the two open windows. In Italy standing in line was not yet a common accepted routine. When a happy foreigner would leave a window, a fight would break out.

After half an hour one of the two windows closed and on the other side of the room one opened. This caused a civil war.

I left the building and lived in Firenze for three years without the necessary papers…

Barcelona, August 2017.