Il viaggio diventa così una dimensione dell’anima che cerca se stessa nelle corrispondenze e può anche compiere il salto qualitativo per prendere corpo nella narrazione.

La quale si sviluppa su un piano che dà un volto al percorso, racconta della sosta e degli sguardi, della voracità dell’occhio che cerca i dettagli per farli suoi, segue il profilo degli oggetti e delle figure che abitano la giornata e la vive nel suo farsi. E diventa cadenza e tempo che riversa nelle figure, nei corpi. Il ritmo del viaggio è tutto quello che non è scritto nel suo programma, è la parola incontrata lungo il percorso, è l’orma e il segno.

Se desideri andare ad Itaca, suggerisce il grande Kavafis, “devi augurarti che la strada sia lunga”, ed è necessario che il cammino si affidi all’indugiare e perciò “non affrettare il viaggio” e fai “che duri a lungo, per anni…”.

Sembra che Claudia Corò abbia ascoltato il poeta greco appunto sostando sulle immagini che propone con ricchezza di dettagli e di segni che rendono le sue opere gioiose e vitali, adeguate alla festosità gaudiosa del carnevale e allo stesso gioco che è sua parte consustanziale.

In questo contesto le maschere finiscono per avere non tanto il compito di nascondere, ma di rivelare il senso del viaggio nel carnevale/viaggio che prende forma con il labbro voglioso e invitante, la trina che si apre al seno generoso, con i capelli vaporosi e tutta una corporeità che si rivela nel dettaglio, nel viaggio che si ama nella sosta e nel guardare, in un andare che detta i tempi e viene scandito dalla varietà e dal segno. E tutto ciò mostra la vera ragione del viaggio che fa dell’incontro il punto cruciale e con tale convinzione l’Artista detta il ritmo ad un andare che ha una ragione nel suo farsi.

Le trentanove xilografie esposte riescono così a suggerire una a una che nascono dalla sosta che è poi il giusto modo per avvicinarsi ad una festa come il carnevale che, per essere usanza e rito, potrebbe anche essere un evento scontato se posto in una logica dove il percorso ha una ragione nell’arrivo, quale che sia. Ogni opera che adorna le pareti dell’albergo è come un invito cordiale ad entrare nel carnevale, nel mondo della maschera. Ed è proprio in questo modo che diventa un viaggio giacché la maschera nasconde e rivela, ha la forza di un invito a guardare.

Il viaggio di Xe Carneval ha anche il volto della narrazione immaginifica che riporta al tempo e specialmente a quello di Venezia in quanto luogo del carnevale che le appartiene.

E così il viaggio nel carnevale si arricchisce della sua valenza temporale, con altri segni e simboli che riportano alla storia di Venezia e al suo senso. Sono le stesse maschere, difatti, a portare il viaggio tra le colonne del leone alato e di san Teodoro che fanno da cornice alla piazzetta, ad andare sul mare dove mostrano il loro profilo orgoglioso i velieri; essi seguono itinerari antichi scanditi a loro volta dalle mappe, altro segno forte del viaggio di cui, in un certo senso, sono una maschera nella sua valenza di rivelazione e desiderio.

Il viaggio che Claudia Corò narra in queste trentanove immagini non può nascondere la ricerca di una qualche sicurezza che non riesce però a realizzarsi pienamente nella sosta, nell’atto di scavare nella cosa, di dirla nei suoi dettagli per renderla più familiare e diventare essa stessa una sua parte. Del viaggio, resta difatti latente la trasgressione, quell’elemento che viene dallo stesso andare che conquista e porta a concedersi alle sue regole.

Le opere in mostra rivelano una femminilità delicata che detta grazia allo stile e buona cadenza alla scansione. Sono ricorsi adeguati capaci di associare lo spazio e il tempo nella modalità formale che caratterizza la buona proposta artistica. E costituiscono un valido viatico per una buona qualità del viaggio di Claudia nella pittura.

la differenza consista in questo: la forma illustrativa rivela immediatamente il suo significato tramite l'intelletto, mentre la forma non illustrativa passa prima per la sensazione e solo dopo, lentamente, riporta alla realtà. Perché sia così, non lo so ...''.

Onestamente non lo so neppure io, comunque questo modo di arrivare alla forma mi sembra addirittura più vicino alla realtà, anche se in maniera intrinseca. Claudia in gran parte della sua produzione, da me conosciuta, esprime una raffigurazione che, in maniera immediata, costantemente mi ha riportato alla memoria la frase di Bacon.

Figures that move in a timeless space, with no apparent abode, almost in search of a place that is a being in every where as in an improbable stratosphere, in the primordial structure of the world to deal only with the cosmos. They are the representation of a dispersed humanity, shipwrecked and in search of a landing place, a source, even serial figures and bare of every but strong in being seekers of a new world that move erratically within old nautical maps of a time that was.

The tones of the works realized, where the warm pastels predominate that are well suited to the mixed technique used by the artist (acrylics and oil pastels), when they are celestial, blue, of a pale grey/blue that is confused between the upper part of the terrestrial crust, the sky and the sea, cover the characters that become even more unrecognizable and devoid of identity to navigate undeterred between sky and sea.

Without any boundaries, therefore, crammed into cramped cartographic spaces, but intrepid in claiming their presence without blame, despite the lack of a compass, disoriented and the perennial search for a shore, where the shore becomes a port of peace, security, lack of fear, a roof in which to escape from the continuous dramas of existence. In one of the most recent paintings, and I refer to the great work Map celeste of the summer solstice of 2018, the bodies are more and more entangled, deprived of a minimal living space, almost a body to body for survival, and therefore the references become more explicit, they remind us how difficult it is still today to fight to save oneself, to reach the shore of a new land.

Conversely, at times it is evident in Claudia Corò's paintings a more serene and luminous atmosphere, almost meaning that the landing is near, that the shore has been reached, and then the bodies come alive, perhaps dance, and seem to live the carefreeness of many bathers of Cézanne, in a festive atmosphere and with the energy of the joie de vivre.

I wish the artist a warm consensus of the public and the woman the sagacity for an incessant deepening of his work, so as to expand the involving questions in it.

Her face is softly illuminated by that soft light and her dark green eyes look at a drawing album resting on the table, closed with a ribbon tied in a bow. Alongside, some boxes of colored crayons, pencils, watercolors. A smile illuminates that girl's face, revealing her happiness in facing the challenge that that volume, enclosed in her ribbon, represents. Hands raise that album from the table. The right hand pulls the end of the ribbon and the knot melts. Index and thumb of the left hand grab the hardcover and browse the pages of that book, while she observes the works that other artists have left on those sheets, until she reaches the first two white facades.

Resting the album on the table, the left hand makes a pressure on the binding line between the two pages. The right hand takes a pencil. She is Claudia Corò, a Venetian artist who, after attending artistic high School, Academy of Fine Arts and International Center of Graphics, began her journey in art. Seeing an artist who traces the first signs of graphite, on a white surface, is always a beautiful suggestion. It is the emotion of that moment when thoughts come true, ideas and artistic ability take shape, the result of years of technical experience and especially emotions, she has her creative moment. The paper remains impressed by those signs that flow by tracing safe paths, such as rivers, roads, profiles. She is drawing the figure of a fisherman, a boat, the sea and a setting sun. With skilled calibrated gestures exalts the main forms, then the contours, the nuances, the details. Each artist is somewhat unique in their work and Claudia Corò makes of her drawings of the maps of the soul, of the itineraries of the feelings, of the topographical plants of the emotions; I would say that it is a journey of memory. And hers is a memory of seawater and lagoon, of fishermen and nets, of gondolas and Squeri. She sustains it: "The journey has always been the companion of my artistic expression. The journey led me to exhibit in attractions and places very different from Venice (she has just returned from Los Angeles, where she presented her works), but my painting is still part of this city, inseparably linked to the flow of tides, to the intricate handwriting of these canals, to the color of this sea and to the particular light of these atmospheres".

And one perceives it immediately by entering her study in the foundations of the Giudecca, or by visiting an exhibition of hers: those canals, that lagoon water, those rhythms and those situations are part of her painting, which is indissolubly knotted in Venice and to the idea of the journey. Also it is not by chance that her works are often made upon nautical maps. Of course Claudia Corò 's journey is a journey into and out of her own feelings, passions and loves. Driven by that drive that metaphorically is the propulsion of the oar in the water to make a Mascareta proceed on the lagoon surface, the paintings of Corò are an expression of a free gesture that, albeit entrusted to an emotional gesturality, can lead to fruition with extreme competence. And similarly to the sailor who, with expert gestures, knows how to insure his boat at the inlet of a port, she also knows the skillful art of measure, by dosing colors and gray pencil, in a sort of "geographic expressionism" in which the sign is travelled, is traced, is canal or road or a simple pretext to enhance, exasperating the emotional side of reality compared to the objectively perceptible. An emotional navigator, a rowing of the suggestions of feelings, a compass of vibrations of the heart and light. While drawing on that album, Claudia is experiencing the enthusiasm of her design and, observing it carefully, it seems that the colored pencil is really an oar and the rustle on the water is real, as perceptible seems the scent of algae or the breeze of Scirocco wind on her face.

But it is here that the hand interrupts its signature path on that album. The artist looks at her work, puts down pencils and pulls away from that drawing, to see it at a different distance. Outside that building, the lagoon rhythms flow slowly, and the sun, through the large stained glass window, still beautifully illuminates the walnut table where an album is open on a beautiful drawing.

A drawing by Claudia Corò.

The elements of a mosaic formulated to give a comprehensible vision even to our simple eyes, through a metamorphosis of threads and gestures, which in turn become cryptic indications: pregnant with ulterior purpose. Evocative but not uniquely interpretable these hands, at work, that build, that destroy are here immortalized, frozen in time: suspended in the non-reality of a map that purports to represent the world but which, given the precariousness of borders, states and time is but a transient interpretation.

Fingers, knuckles, palms are outlined in a masterly and confident manner; their three-dimensionality is rendered in a decisive manner and with an original perspective positioning. Whatsmore, in certain instances, the hands are even more insinuated and consequentially the geographical scenario is of even greater importance to the composition.

Thus the very support chosen is structurally inclusive of her artistic subtleties each stroke of which is layered instinctually and without preparatory study.

At first glance the gestures drawn by Claudia Corò seem elements of a lexicon common to each of us: indicative, as with the map of Latin America or emblematic as with the maps Sicily and Sardinia.

The other works although of familiar situations linked to daily life, may assume a plurality of meanings, as with the hands that protrude on the map of Puglia that remind us of hands hard at work in the picking of fruit and vegetables in southern Italy. Hands illuminated by an intense sun other than by the frontal light that spreads out on the map: because the real dimension of our lives is always different and more complex than its conceptual representation.

A tribute to the exhibition site, Gran Teatro La Fenice, to which the artist is very closely linked, the hand gestures resemble the movements that dictates music; and the very form of the exhibition which sees the spectator as the director of an imaginary orchestra.

Geographic maps have appeared in Claudia Corò's production for a number of years, first in relation to the issues concerning migration and then as a tribute to the tradition of exploration of her native city, Venice.

Indispensable tools for imaginative, sensitive travelers and explorers who in the course of their mission feel the need to say: "I'm here".

Claudia Corò was born in Venice where she attended high school, the Academy of Fine Arts and the International Center of Graphic Arts. Her works are present in public and private collections throughout the world.

She is my favorite iconoclastic elf. A gestural painter with an immediate visual impact, an abstract impressionist between magic and sensuality, music and color. I would like to be you and wander between gardens and canals in this border territory, between memory and present, to understand the ancestral bond of the people with the seas, rivers and their sources.

The artist captures daily fragments already demolished by time and enhances them by giving them a new life. Her pagioli, pieces of the wooden flooring of the boats, are transfigured by making images that refer to the classical iconography appear. The search for the ideal beauty explodes, studded with a multitude of points of view, among them the heterogeneous.

The artist does not mimic nature but is part of it, and in this "reinvigorating demolition", in this natural void; the spectator must understand that the search for unity is not physical but spiritual.

A world chaotic but dominated in its depths by simple rules and by age-old customs, the difficulty of planning its own future that finds valid answers in the simple and daily gestures. The whole thing sometimes with no complete awareness. And this is how art expressed in the form of painting merges with the daily life of the artist, giving life to real life shots of both the real outside world and of how the world is in the mind and in the heart of the artist. Here, modern works come out, inspired with absolute naturalness and without being forced, to the art passed, in particular, to that of the "Venetian '700".

It confirms the views declined on wooden tables of recovery, almost to mean the indissoluble belonging of the painting to a lagoon reality that's still alive. The naked femininity is crouched and splashed without remorse to give us the measure of her technique.

Profound reflections on the sign, on the tract, on the matter, speak to us of archaic ideality revealing sublime interconnecting affinities with the pure essence of being.

Inspired by the classical tradition, Claudia, has been able to create new and innovative plastic forms, experimenting with different executive techniques, without abandoning the ancient composure, the archaic tension. The Greek deities are inspiring muses to the artist, represented in academic postures through tangled strands of textures, refined signs, magmatic and volumetric tones. Heroes of Myth, Goddesses of Mythology, assume contemporary identities becoming paradigms of sensuality, perceptive and changing puzzles of the ego. Infinite and underlying, force lines, from the soft sinuosity, generate elegant shapes from the refined rhythmicity, flowing, in the cosmic vacuum of the substrate, through a synthetic vocation to essentiality. Fleeting flashes of irrevocable moments ignite the compositions with scratches of light with which Claudia gives the volumes a new life, creating a transposition between presence and absence, indefinite and experienced.

The "bodies" of Claudia Corò appear as silent artifices of an indefinite Eden, exploded fragments of irrevocable solitude, suspended in a perceptive nothing, where the light is tacit from the shape towards a fascinating destiny. The stretch of the faces, deliberately mentioned, gives the figures a classic confidentiality that transfigures the forms in a personal abstract informality. The wooden supports accentuate this tangible dissolution of the forms in deliberately simplified traits, identifying with the occasionalities of finding and using the "Laguna Woods", a time of birth and now, neo objects of art, on which grow the Pale violet flowers or the beautiful shapes designed by Claudia.

Claudia in her paintings tries to find this hidden, but always present, reflex. Both a torso, a face, a view of Venice, there is always this deep echo, something more than what the eyes see. I wondered if Claudia did not have the third eye, which in the Tibetan tradition belongs to the Illuminati. But I don't think so. The extreme wisdom is in the extreme simplicity, sometimes, and the proposals of this artist are anything but pretentious. We think of the "pagiòi" (wooden boards that cover the bottom of the Venetian boats). They are pieces of wood trampled a million times by a million feet. The humblest thing one can imagine. Yet Claudia paints them with great love, embraces them, makes them present, alive. It gives them the value they have, that you can not calculate in money, but in time spent to live. The time of the fishermen, of the people who row and don't need the engine to move. The time of the old wood, of the wood burnt by time and bare feet. Claudia's light eyes look around like those of a cat, photographing what there is to understand, and then close, to sleep, perhaps. Maybe to dream.

The artist wonders with different techniques that also include analogue photos, on the reality that surrounds her, who loves, who knows and experiences daily, mindful perhaps of the Chinese saying "live in the bamboo to forget the bamboo if you want to paint the bamboo." The strength of this painter, never pays the results achieved, lies in her willingness to reinvent the space and the reality that surrounds her now with faster stretches to make fleeting impressions, now more definite and precise. Only the space lived, the known reality can give us the measure of ourselves and of our existence.

This is because between painting and boating has grown, developed and put into motion her overflowing creativity, physicality and passion for her city and in particular for her island or, better yet, that set of eight islands that make up the Giudecca, former "Land of hunger and Exploitation" (as written by the Venetian singer-songwriter Alberto D'Amico). An artist of and for Venice, with the lagoon close to her, that magic liquid dressed for all seasons, from the fogs of autumn, the sun and heat of summer, the rabid snorts of the Scirocco, the icy raids of the Bora.

A lagoon artist and not only because she was born, lives and works here, but because she believes and hopes and manifests it with her doing, her energy, her grit, her daily life with the city and her people. Claudia graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice, she has pried into the glass and art prints of the laboratory of Claudio Grassetti and from there landed at the International Center of Graphics to learn, at the school of Silvano Gosparini and Nicola Sena, the art and manufacture of paper and binding and engraving techniques. Among her experiences are exhibitions in Hangzhou (China), Poznan (Poland) and Sharm El Sheik (Egypt) where she participated in the first biennial of "Art on the Red Sea".

The area of research that most fascinates her is that of the human figure, at the center of her painting since the beginning and also expressed on large canvases. Bodies, faces, gestures understood as expressions of everyday life, made up of work and feelings, moods, emotions, passions translated into movable brushstrokes that escape the boundaries of the figurative to "melt" the gestuality of color. But her curiosity, her desire to explore, has also lead to the field of graphics, photographic manipulation and venturing into the lagoon landscape through the use, in the most recent works, of wooden supports. And here Claudia enters into the field of the boats, at the stern of the Canottieri Giudecca or Claudia, aspiring mistress of the axe, who spends eight hours a day in the shipyard of Roberto Dei Rossi to learn the secrets of the art of building boats. It is from this boatyard that they come out, piece by piece, (not stolen...) Its woods, old Paioli and other remnants of boats that Claudia transforms lovingly in her studio to regenerate them and rewrite them with the painting.

Woods used, seasoned, aching survivors in the small studio of the Giudecca find another use and meaning, respecting their small maritime history and construction site. It is a Venice in the boat that is outlined and stretches out on these worn surfaces, in these horizontal notes, in these sparse essential glimpses of the lagoon that is closest to her and friend, that between the Giudecca Canal and the islands of Sacca Sessola , of graces, of Poveglia... Islands, horizons and boats to be engraved, scratched, painted or colored following the cracks, imperfections, the experience of the wood, the memories of water and paint. A simple and true lagoon, with the wise eye of those who know and frequent the places, with the immediacy of the sign, with the sensibility of those who know how to collect a tingle of light, a tint, an atmosphere and the impresses on the body of a friendly wood. But it is not only the wood that hosts its desire for landscape: they can also be cardboard boxes on which to reinvent a tip of the customs with a "redeemer" of signs, scratches, stains, brushstrokes, traces of glazes, flows of bitumen and touches of gold or reinterpret a stucco mill with a collage of papers.

Wood, cardboard and even an old dear sailing canvas continue to tell of her Giudecca, the innermost intimacies and the outermost visibilities, letting her agile gesture slide to break the landscape into tiles of color or in brushstrokes of light in movement, in a vibrant chromatic mix, in notes that approach and overlap the search, more than the real, the material and emotions of the places.

Claudia of the Giudecca, of the lagoon, of the boatyard, of the studio, Claudia who participates, who dreams of a Venice of boats and artists (and of artists in boats...), who paints with happiness and agility, always ready to travel new roads, to reinvent herself, to experiment with other "representations" for her restless everyday life lagoon. With conviction, now making her painting mature in her wandering-rowing-flying freedom to interpret and share the visible and the invisible, solidity and lightness of a city of water and light.

The prophecy has come true. The ancient natural graphic talent has been transformed into a technical skill present and an appreciable artistic sensibility that unfolds in pictorial proposals hardly discounted. Taking into account the natural development of infantile graphism, I wondered how the "things" changed over time, that is to say which direction had taken the expressive urgency of our artist as this is sedate in its current production pictorial. Her design as a child is intriguing, free, decisive, well composed and rich in details with remarkable graphic solutions in relation to her age. The stretch proves to be safe, continuous and well executed in relation to the project premises of the child. The basic psychological tone, as this has been translated into the graphic support, seems to be oriented to sobriety and affirmativeness. There are traces of a poetic intimism capable of making the difference between a good pictorial realization and an accidental sketch of artistic production.

In seeing the current works of Claudia I had the way to reflect around the evolution of that beautiful compound ancient sign put at the service of a graphic realization oriented to serenity and guaranteed by a festive fantasy. Now the sign has been more tormented and restless. Fragmented, sometimes caught in nervous twirls. The stroke is often translated into sharp slashes, which tell of memories and current truths not yet absorbed entirely in the artistic product. This is to say that, especially in its graphic production, the reverberations of a psychological tension are reclaiming a definitive existential solution. Things change in her paintings. The color has the upper hand on the graphic gesture giving back to the canvas in tones less dramatic and open to emotional compromise.

This is to say that Claudia's technical training is felt and, when she wants to express her feelings in a painting, she is able to stem the impulsiveness with skillful pictorial gestures. The reference is mainly to the contours of her human figures, which are never trivial or decorative. They take the form of atmospheric images that can lick the contours of the pleasantness. Some of her portraits indicate this direction. In the seductive "Venezie" as well. In these works, the reflections of he intimate delicacy and sensibility are seized, which makes her attentive to the faint signals reflected by today's social unrest.

Her paintings, as anticipated, often reflect the declinations of the soul oriented to the dramatic solution. It brings to mind, her engravings relating to tragic shipwrecks, to the drownings that anticipated the tragedy that our generous Mediterranean has brought directly into the hearts of many families, and of reflection, in each one of us. Even more, it brings to mind her "nocturnal nightmares" or her tyrannical fantasies. And it is in these works that I tend to recognize the highest level of creativity and the highest stylistic figure that Claudia is able to return to us.

In Venice, where she has lived since she was born. And she knows it as if it were a great friend, a bit grumpy : sometimes it smiles at you, sometimes it pours. Hers is an art that counts in her own way with the "City of the Doges". She takes it and makes it her own, painting it, photographing it, showing it in a very peculiar way. She twists it with color when she paints it on canvas. The undefined contours of San Marco or other places of the lagoon remain, but the color manages to transform the representation by bringing it to a completely different level than that of the "rappresentazioni turistiche". With the drawing on paper or even the impact on wood, the fascination that she gives to the city belongs to other times, she seems almost to go back in years and to be able to see "Nezia" through nostalgic eyes. In the black and white photographs, the glimpses are made and the atmosphere dark if not for flashes of color over the photos that make one detail rather than another, just strike the observer and induce him to find what is there, inside the opera and beyond the representation

Claudia Corò knows art too well to stop at this and her research goes beyond showing a certain craftsmanship in mastering the technique of figurative design. The subjects may be persons to her care or only torsions of busts, legs and arms: Suppleness lost in space and fixed by color. She herself admits that she studied the technique of drawing very well and loved the body as an expression of art. Her latest works on naval paper fascinate her gaze at the suppleness of poses and the decision of the graphic sign. The color makes the bodies of creatures supernatural, aquatic because in the end the background is still a nautical chart with an aged, used, crumpled appearance. In other works, the reference to the past is clear, to the statues of the eighteenth-century headless cherubs. A tribute to modern art heritage of a talent born from the studio and not from improvisation. The use of color varies from time to time, from the faded to the color dripping from the canvas, maintaining the principle of consistency with the work represented. It predominates where it is present and is decidedly connotative.

To experience it, just connect to her site www.claudiart.net or visit it in Venice, on the island of Giudecca where she holds her works in her studio.