Curriculum Vitae di Corinto Marianelli

"Oui, je suis..." was the successful slogan of an important motor firm. My name is Corinto Marianelli. Corinto a very unusual name, stuck to my like a trade mark. I was born in Rome, in nineteenfortynine, under the sign of Acquarius.
I studied Advertising Graphic Arts at the Institute of Arts, and Scenography at the School of Fine Arts. A love of painting has been my companion since my childhood - I was eleven years old when I tried to reproduce the sky, laying blue thickly on the canvas with a painting brush. The idea of including photographic images in my paintings, ripened at the end of sixties - the years of the School of Fine Arts - and I was fascinated by the Dada movement, and by the anti-art, by intelligent flavour for provocation. Duchamp, Picabia, Arp, Tristan Tzara and Man Ray were my juvenile landmarks. I pay a deep tribute to modern art and to vanguard artists up to Pop Art with Rauschenberg, because they improssed not only my work and my relationship with Art, but my own life too.
In nineteenseventy, when I bought my first camera, a Nikkormat Ftn, I really did not have any knowledge about photography, and stops was something I just heard about. But is was love at first sight. Art, Bauhaus, Gestalt, visual perception and the "Theory of the field" have been my "Nutella".
Photography entered my paintings as an anchor to reality, and as a first reading to the complexity of a work of art, to follow a total involvement in society, very popular at that time. Photography overbearingly entered my life, leaving no doubts as to what destiny was "weaving" for me. I taught Arts in secondary schools, then Photography in vocational schools, until the call for full immersion in what was my true profession, became overwhelming. While photography was disclosing its secrets, I was discovering its economical potential. Painter friends was teachers of the Academy asked me to photograph their paintings for exhibition catalogues. So I started to earn money, and for a student of scenography this was not bad at all. Photography of works of Art, was my first specialization, and from that time on, I worked for hundreds of catalogues, I contributes to the most important galleries and worked whit the greatest contemporary artists.
Reportage, telling stories has remained on the contrary, in the field of expression, of researching, and as I mentioned before,was the anchor to reality, this reality that was melting to the pictorial imprinting, creating an osmosis " Between Painting and Photography" that was the spring board of perception. "The train of Cage" at the Biennal Exhibition of Venice, 1993; "Week-end : a story", that marks a passage - in the early eighties - from a "public" conception of art, towards a more intimate attitude, but not less disruptive, of the creativity. Still life, Industrial photography and Portrait are my further specializations, and are to-day mainly my work in the studio. I pay special attention to still-life of small and medium sizes, an interesting field requiring, beyond the necessary technical knowledges, a special taste for experimenting and planning skill, to solve situations sometimes impossible, due to the difficulty to find out on the market what we need , and finally, skifulness to give form to the project. The world of still-life is very wide , and includes fields that transform themselves in a specialization within the specialization. In my case the capacity to manage with the problems arising from the specular surfaces, allowed me to go deeper into a further specialization: Photography of watches, where all the technical problems of the photography can be found.
For many years I have contributed to emerging magazines in this field. I can say that it is a connection consolidated through time, but Iam requested for still-life and industrial photos even by advertising agencies. Portrait, on the other hand, needs more reflection. I state immediately my love for this field of photography, that I carry out mostly in the studio, in B/W and printed by me as usual. In the last years, mostly through portrait, I rediscovered and revalued the use of the "theatrical illumination" idea, where shadows and lights, contribute to create an atmosphere imbued whit a strong "artisan" flavour, far from the aseptic light of the bank, that in the eighties makes banal quite a lot of photography. I must say that I used and use the bank, and give thanks to end by suffocate the taste for research, and eventually for freedom and creativity. The last challenge to marvellous instrument that is photography, comes from the computer: so welcome computer. The true danger does not come through this machine through which we are inter-acting, but in the brain of the one who is convinced that the computer is the solution to all problems, that due to magic the ugly photographs, as the ugly duckling, can be transformed into swans. This is a wrong conviction: the computer is, and will always be an instrument (even though extraordinary) to be considered. The most important thing to remember, is that an image is born first of all from the technical and cultural background of the individual. A Leica is not enough to become a Cartier Bresson.
If you get to the end of this self- presentation, I do not know if I have to be content or be afflicted by a sense of guilty, thank you for your attention, and have a good screening, for that very little that internet can give back through photographs.

Curriculum