DRAGO PERSIC, Diletto e decoro

"Decoro" sets the rules, while "Diletto" reflects the aesthetic goal—the beauty of the artwork. These two terms form the title of Drago Persic’s current exhibition at the bechter kastowsky gallery in Schaan.

On view are the latest works by the painter, who was born in Banja Luka in 1981 and grew up in Vorarlberg: works from the “Bergotte” series—a name that refers to a novel by Marcel Proust. In Proust’s “The Captive,” the ailing protagonist Bergotte mustered his last strength to visit a Vermeer exhibition. His motivation was a detail in a painting he had heard about: a shade of color, a peculiar yellow corner of a wall. He knows the painting inside and out, yet cannot recall this particular detail. When he finally stands before the painting and catches sight of this colored detail, Bergotte is so overwhelmed by joy and emotion that he dies at the sight of it.

The hue as an element of joyful expression, of rapture, of diletto—opposed to it is decoro as its antithesis: appropriateness, dignity, and propriety. As early as the art theorist Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo (1538–1592), the significance of these two concepts within a single work of art was emphasized. Such a work was intended to delight the viewer while simultaneously conforming to the moral and functional rules of dignity and propriety that prevailed during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

Since his student days, Drago Persic’s work has revolved around a central motif: the cloth. It offers him the opportunity to depict drapery and folds, as well as the tactile quality of heaviness and lightness, through his painting. As a painter who, from the very beginning, has worked primarily in white, gray, and black, Persic introduced color into this previously colorless creative period in 2019. The “Ultramarine” series of works created at that time can be described as an intensive exploration of color and pigment: Each canvas is the same size, each depicting a cloth draped over an imaginary table edge, each featuring a single pigment. Following what appears to be a scientific inquiry, Persic used a wide variety of pigments, described them, and applied them to the canvases.

After further stages in the development of his work, the “Bergotte” series followed five years later: cloths draped over human torsos, folds that both conceal and reveal, and expressive hands that hold and shape the cloths. And yet it is the color that highlights these folds. Against the monochromatic background, it is brought to life. The colors interact and thereby reinforce each other’s effect. When the artist speaks about his “Bergotte” series, he says: “The focus here is primarily on documenting the pigments and specific shades. The aim is to depict the various nuances and their interactions. This exploration of shades does not occur in isolation, but always in interplay with compositional elements of Renaissance and Baroque painting.”

A connection spans not only the content between the individual cloths of the “Ultramarine” series and the current series of works, but also their geographical origins and presentation. At the time, Persic’s “canvases” were presented in the exhibition “Beech Ash and Anise Oil” at the bechter kastowsky gallery in Vienna, leaning against the wall on boards. Seven years later, Persic’s “Bergotte” paintings are once again being presented in the same manner—this time at the bechter kastowsky gallery in Schaan.

And what does Persic have to say about his most recent creative phase? “I still see myself as a chromophobe who works through color as best I can. Hopefully, the practice will make color more understandable to me. Although working through it is a pastime…”

Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.