The need to return to the origins of form and communication is the gravitational center of Andrea Benetti, the protagonist of the exhibition curated by Toti Carpentieri, currently on display in the halls of Castello Carlo V in Lecce.
He accomplishes this by reviving the “Primal Abstraction”, whose fundamental principles the Bolognese artist claims as his own, translating them into a uniform style that blends painting and engraving, cloisonnism and chromatic vibrancy. He engraves the plastered surface laid on the canvas and tones it with natural substances (oil, hibiscus, coffee, cocoa, turmeric), creating spaces destined for broad applications of oil color.
The technical aspect is one of the defining elements of these works, merging with a reiterated visual alphabet that draws from the masters of the avant-garde, blending them into a personal universe populated by human figures, geometric forms, constellations, stylized vegetal motifs, and vaguely mechanical elements.
Despite the meticulous attention to the technical dimension, each work appears subject to a certain unpredictability, revealing a variety of rhythms, movements, and “disharmonic harmonies” within a texture capable of modifying itself infinitely.
One of Benetti’s key areas of research is also the Neo-Cave movement, which he theorized in a Manifesto in 2006, aesthetically and conceptually reviving Paleolithic art and translating it into a more contemporary language. His aim is to reiterate the primal bond with nature and the instinctive intuitions that guided shaman-painters at the dawn of painting.
They likely painted to propitiate hunting and the capture of large wild animals, to find explanations for natural phenomena. Their visual and communicative needs arose from a desire to confront themselves with the world, to understand it, and to find a defined place within it—needs that produced masterpieces such as those of Altamira, Lascaux, and Porto Badisco.
This primal energy and the vitality of the “primitive” emerge in the video “Essentia”, created by Benetti in collaboration with Basmati Film and projected as part of the exhibition. The Neo-Cave signs come to life through a rhythm of images and jungle music, set against backdrops evoking elements of nature, between light and dreamlike visions, movement and simultaneity—an immersive experience further enhanced by the soundtrack, composed by Benetti himself and Frank Nemola, the Lecce-born musician and longtime trumpeter of Vasco Rossi’s band.