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 Antonio Caputo - 2010 Gianni Moneta - 1984 Heinz von Cramer - 2000 Herbert Pagani - 1976 Lothar Fischer - 2010 Paolo Rizzi - 1990 Pubblio Dal Soglio - 1987 Toni Kienlechner - 1984 Toni Kienlechner - 1986 Toni Kienlechner - 1988 Testimonianze visitatori - 1990 Testimonianze visitatori - 1991 |
Toni Kienlechner wrote about him in 1984
london@duellmemorial.com
The Etruscan landscape is at once the clear subject and the secret message of these drawings by H. J. Duell . The landscape around Viterbo, Vitorchiano, Vetralla and Bomarzo is no longer unknown and remote as it was when the artist discovered it ten years or so ago on his journey from Germany towards Rome, but the strange fascination that the Etruscan land holds for the very attentive pen of this German artist lies in the mysterious and occult structure of the volcanic earth that is buried beneath the rich, wild vegetation. The very ancient history of the land can be felt under every footstep. There is often the sensation of walking over a void- of a cave in the tufo below-over the undiscovered tomb of an Etruscan king- or just a sheep fold carved out of the rock by a trick of nature.
The eye of the artist searches in these stratifications, in the cracks and crevices of the stones,of the brown and grey ruins, in the delicate web of plants and mosses ,follows the rough bark of the great walnut treees that shelter the simple houses and stalls of the modest farms, he decorates his picture with the forms of slender reeds that grow along the banks of hidden streams.
A land so deeply scored, not only in a physical sense but by ‘history’, supplies the artist with infinite, inexhaustible elements of study and fantasy.The land not only offers its beauty but it narrates and teaches as well.Generations have here followed each other for more than three thousand years-shepherds and landowners, the poor and the powerful. Old cities cling to the cliffs that were their natural and only defence. In his images the artist has recaptured the essential drama –the symbiosis between ‘art and nature’.
These drawings have become ‘documents’now that the landscape is in danger and the hills are being heedlessly built over with villas and houses. The end of the old poverty unhappily spells the end of the old harmony.The ‘documents’ of H. J. Duell serve us a discreet warning- to try to insert the new without sacrificing the great treasures handed down from antiquity.
English translation by Vivienne Mura |