“Genoa of a Lifetime” – Luzzati and His City

Pino Boero

It is often said that Genoa has long been a stepmother to its intellectuals, driving them away and forcing them into exile. Our city, Giuseppe Marcenaro wrote some years ago, has “progressively strangled its children (…) not (…) out of despair, but rather out of indolence”. Every rule has its exceptions, and Emanuele Luzzati is undoubtedly one of them. The reason probably lies in the fact that his approach to “stundaia” Genoa (quirky, unconventional) was the right one: discreet, understated (his reply to an interviewer who asked him about his relationship with the city is famous: “I live here”), rooted in a sensory connection shaped more by the gaze than by words. “I have a very strong bond with Genoa, a physical one too,” he said in another interview. “It is a city rich in perspectives, a highly theatrical city.”

There is no doubt that, from his earliest childhood, Lele was someone who “looked at pictures”: not only those in Corriere dei Piccoli, which would later inspire the rhyming couplets in many of his stories, but also the images of the urban world around him. There is a little-known episode worth recounting, as it brings together visual memories and literary echoes, childhoods and memories of both his and mine. My grandfather Giuseppe (“Seppe”) was born in Quarto dei Mille, in the attic of the Antica Osteria del Bai, and grew up between the inn, run by his father Amedeo (known as “il Bai”), the rocks of Cala dei Montani and the greenery of Villa Quartara. Many of my childhood memories are connected with the inn and with Rosetta and Vittoria, the daughters of my grandfather’s younger brother. Motherless from a very early age, they ran the place themselves. One was short, plump and easy-going; the other tall, thin and nervous. Yet they shared one feature that always struck me: they invariably wore black capes.

Some years ago, while talking with Lele, I discovered that as a child he too had spent his summer holidays with his family in an annexe of Villa Quartara, very close to the inn. He remembered the two sisters, almost his own age, always wearing their little black capes. “We had secretly nicknamed them,” he told me, “the two little orphans.” The theatrical drama Les Deux Orphelines (1874), by d’Ennery and Cormon, later made into a film by Griffith in 1921, took shape and colour for Lele through the human figures of two little girls in black capes…

Why this digression? Because there is no doubt that when Luzzati returned to Genoa in 1945, after his forced but creatively productive stay in Switzerland (in Lausanne, as is well known, he had attended the École des Beaux-Arts et des Arts Appliqués), his rediscovery and repossession of the city began precisely with the reconstruction of its “characters” and settings. The drawings from that period, exhibited here for the first time, are rapidly sketched, almost as if driven by an urgency not to miss a single detail of a city returning to the normality of everyday gestures.

We are presented with the world of traditional Genoese shops, brought to life by a diverse humanity portrayed with affection and empathy. I am thinking of the charcoal merchant’s shop, with its characteristic two-handled cart and the woman seen from behind in the doorway, but also of the depth of the fresh fish shop and the delicatessen, with the little old lady selling roasted chestnuts in the foreground.

There is a “Bar Pippo” which is certainly not Pippo Luce’s restaurant in Galleria Mazzini, the meeting place of early twentieth-century intellectuals, yet it nevertheless evokes the opening lines of one of Sbarbaro’s famous Trucioli: “I saw Susanna leaving Pippo. She was wearing a triangular dress of coffee-coloured karakul in a diamond pattern.”

We also find a skilful play of interiors, with taverns and establishments where wine and spirits are enjoyed, alone or in company. The characters’ features are exaggerated to grotesque effect, evoking precisely that human landscape which Camillo Sbarbaro had captured in memorable pages many years earlier.

We are struck by the attention to detail, seemingly at odds with the speed of the drawing, yet certainly anticipating one of the most distinctive features of the later, better-known Luzzati. The city he depicts is truly built vertically. As Caproni writes in Litania: “Vertical Genoa, / vertigo, air, stairs.” Its depth lies in its little balconies and terraces; the mixture of modest windows adorned with plants and the grand windows of aristocratic palaces conveys Genoa’s unmistakable character, despite the seemingly haphazard accumulation of things.

In this context, I cannot overlook a remarkable drawing in which Lele depicts a dance party at the Circolo Artistico Tunnel, which had been based in Palazzo Spinola, on Via Garibaldi, since 1930. The drawing style recalls Maccari’s caricatural and grotesque work in the black-and-white and colour illustrations for Aldo Palazzeschi’s Bestie del 900(Vallecchi, 1951), with the added pleasure of a playful blend of irony and self-irony (he writes down the names of some of those present and does not leave himself out).

Why have I dwelt on this early, almost unknown Luzzati? Because I believe that it is precisely this curiosity about the surrounding world, this desire to capture it in all its many facets, that forms the foundation of the multilingualism so admired by Gianni Rodari: “I have always sincerely envied Lele for the natural ease with which he uses so many different languages: words, images, theatre, cinema, ceramics, puppets… It is as though he had not just one mother tongue, but three or four.”

For Luzzati, Genoa is the stage on which to bring countless stories to life in different ways. It is not my place to discuss his work as a theatre set designer, but I do not want to overlook the covers he created for Genova, the City Council’s magazine. They are full of vitality and energy, expressed both through the imaginative depictions of churches, squares and palaces and through the bold use of colour.

Nor should we overlook the visual milestones that have marked the city’s history over the past sixty years: the covers for Shell Italiana’s magazine (a whimsical round dance of vessels from different historical periods, a true tribute to seafaring); the magnificent Columbus Calendar, created for the fifth centenary of the Genoese navigator’s birth; the small catalogues (Artisti a bordo) for the shipping company Italia; the mural Alfabeto, created for the children’s dining room aboard the ocean liner Augustus (an extraordinary alphabet book in which Lele brings to life, through colour, a universe of animals, houses, characters and landscapes for children, standing in stark contrast to the many educational alphabet books that accompanied Italian schoolchildren in their early learning); the other decorative works aboard the passenger ships that crossed the Atlantic – Andrea Doria, Marco Polo, Ausonia, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo – which found an extraordinary backdrop for their magnificence in the Port of Genoa itself; the many posters created for events and initiatives around the city (and I particularly like to recall the one from 1981 for the Genoa conference Nella realtà attraverso la finestra, dedicated to Gianni Rodari, in which numerous children peep out from windows, smiling and winking at the audience); the book covers for works by Genoese authors, from Valentino Gavi’s Il Signor Nessuno to Licia Oddino’s Habitat per un’idea; and the plate created for UNICEF and sold at the national Festival dell’Unità in Genoa in 2004, depicting a boat filled with children of every colour, with the Lantern in the background and a rainbow full of hope.

Some books, however, best express Lele’s bond with Genoa: the encyclopaedia Io e gli altri (1971), published by Genoese publisher Angelo Ghiron, which, as Rodari wrote, “was nearly sent to the stake for being too revolutionary, or too obscene”; Genova una città in 20 storie (written by Tonino Conte, Laterza, 1996); and Noi che sempre navighiamo. Trenta poesie e un racconto dell’Anonimo Genovese (a reworking by Tonino Conte, with illustrations also by Flavio Costantini, Banca Carige, 2003).

In Io e gli altri, Luzzati brought the intelligence of a mature artist to the project, while retaining the Rodarian “young ear” that allowed him to “understand / the voices grown-ups never stop to listen to”. He succeeded in surrounding the subjects with a fantastical, fairy-tale atmosphere, helping, I believe, to defuse the controversy and expose the absurdity of those who were then crying scandal.

In Genova una città in 20 storie, from the very first double-page spread, our artist presents us with a ship crowded with the characters from the stories, while in the background the grey silhouette of Genoa stands out sharply between the sea (another constant presence in many of his works) and the hills. The ship is loaded almost beyond capacity, and there is no doubt that the interplay of colours and collage, beyond evoking “Mediterranean luminosity” (perhaps influenced by Onofrio Martinelli, one of his earliest teachers?), opens the door to stories and to that deep vocation for storytelling which is one of the most significant traits of Liguria’s poetic and intellectual identity.

The gateway with its two towers opening onto the sea, beyond its reference to Porta Soprana, takes on an almost metaphysical quality. It becomes a fully realised interpretation of what Conte writes: “Janus is also the god of passages, of doorways. Personally, I find this latter hypothesis the most fascinating, and perhaps the closest to the truth. There is no doubt that, throughout their long history, the Genoese have made many passages and crossed many thresholds…”

I could stop here, since freshness, simplicity and clarity accompany the entire visual journey of the book. But it is worth adding a few more details. When commenting, for instance, on the Anonymous Genoese author’s text about the dangers of life at sea, Conte speaks of Ligurian sanctuaries “perched in elevated places facing the sea”. He mentions the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Guard on Mount Figogna and the countless votive offerings “hanging from its walls”.

Luzzati devotes a large drawing to this subject, a remarkably effective votive image of sorts: on a stormy sea, aboard a ship tossed by the waves, a Madonna and Child rise in the foreground. A shipwrecked sailor clings to the Madonna’s robe. There is no doubt that Lele handles the subject with extraordinary skill, using the red and the lily-patterned collage of the Virgin’s two garments to make visible the significance, in secular Liguria, of the fear of the unknown, the risks of overseas ventures and the faith in a maternal, miraculous intervention.

Among the illustrations in the book, a veritable summation of Luzzati’s love for his city, we also find the towers, churches and houses. San Lorenzo, the Embriaci Tower, Palazzo San Giorgio and San Matteo are depicted in black and white – or rather, in grey, the colour of our stone, which conveys solidity and clarity even in drawing.

Genova una città in 20 storie is a book to be looked at. Not because Conte’s text is lacking, but because Luzzati has become its true protagonist. His gift for observation turns into fairy tale, freeing itself from the constraints of history to become a story in its own right, all the more fascinating for being constructed in an apparently modest, simple and intimate manner.

In the large illustration of the Carlo Felice Theatre, the theatre’s classical structure provides the backdrop for a brilliantly coloured stage, brought to life by performing characters. It is an elegant way of suggesting the supremacy of theatrical play over its “container”: a genuine tribute to theatre.

Likewise, the large depiction of Sottoripa, with its collage of objects piled one upon another, conveys the bustle and vitality that have always characterised the arcades facing the Caricamento area. Caproni’s Litania once again accompanies us: “Genoa of Sottoripa. / Trading post. Sex. Crowding.”

The book closes with a colourful view of Genoa, above which, in the foreground, rises the elegant tower of the lift leading to the Spianata di Castelletto. The lift occupies a significant place in Luzzati’s work and seems almost to suggest that Lele’s return home, far from being merely metaphorical, passes through an ascent that leads to the city’s most panoramic vantage point, a paradise for the eyes:

When I go to paradise
let there be only one
bell, scented with rainwater
and with tiled roofs at dawn.
When I decide to go
to paradise, I will go
there in the elevator,
at night, of Castelletto,
stealing a little piece
of my eternal peace.

(Giorgio Caproni, L’ascensore, translated by Michael Palma).

There can be no doubt, then, that such a deep-rooted and enduring bond with his own city finds its fullest expression in the front and back cover illustrations of Noi che sempre navighiamo, where “Genoa Regina” contains the entire historic city beneath the ample folds of her dress.

Once again, this is a tribute to the city – a mother, not a stepmother – that Luzzati leaves us. He gives us all the space we need to understand that within that play of light and shadow, that tangle of narrow alleys, steep streets and vertical perspectives, lies the “Genoa of a lifetime” that accompanied him, so fruitfully, throughout his long and extraordinary journey.

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