Viola’s technique
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Roma, 17 giugno 2021
The main element of Viola’s technique is indian ink traced over pencil lines. Being one of the simplest and fastest techniques, it’s particularly suitable for the frantic times of the daily newspapers he used to work for. It had to be found a defined subject within an afternoon, in order to fill blanks whose shape and size are still unknown at the beginning. And since the “Culture” pages are usually the first ones that need to be finished, Viola had just a few hours to complete the job, usually dealing with bizarre shapes.
After leaving daily newspapers and starting working for weekly magazines, with more human rhythms, Viola’s technique had the opportunity to explore new paths. Colored backgrounds started appearing more and more, representing dreams or thoughts of the portrait character, together with collage patterns and plays of colors.
We find as well indian ink on cardboard drawings, “sfondi a tempera ‘spatolata”, leafy backgrounds, with real leaves “floating” on tempera or with floral decorations, or also with cutouts of adjusted photos. Indeed, through the artists’ vision even the genre of portrait can give birth to any kind of representation.
