Artist and Writer Roberto Plevano has a permanent exhibition of its work at 103 Via Dolzino, Chiavenna.
I first met Roberto Plevano in a cosy bar at the top end of the via Dolzino. It was late February. I had previously heard of him through a range of artist friends all of whom share a passion for that creative sensibility which imaginative souls manage to express on canvas or through other media. On the phone, when we were arranging time and place for a meet-up, I became pretty much aware I was talking to someone with a multifaceted personality, inspired perhaps by a narrative base.
It was an intuition that was to be proved spot-on, almost as soon as the pleasantries were over.
Before we could agree on the interview’s possible direction, Plevano is in full flow and any attempt to frame our conversation in a question and answer format went right out of the window. Roberto talks happily about himself: his life, his successes but also his failures. And he’s genuine about it too. He’s enthusiastic when he describes a childhood spent in Chiavenna living in the huge mansion which until the end of the 16th century had housed Ludovico Castelvetro. He struggles to hold back tears when he remembers his father – a member of the Carabinieri – who was the one person who realised once the family had moved to Milan - that for Roberto’s well-being it was important that his son should maintain contact with Chiavenna and the surrounding mountains.
It’s a liberating, free-wheeling account, as if almost necessary, and which takes some keeping up with. On any number of occasions the importance of the bond Plevano has forged with Chiavenna emerges.
During each and every phase of his very full life – Plevano is 71 now – there isnot a single element that in some fashion or other he cannot reconnect logically to his childhood years, to the geometric patterns which lead back to his roots.
And his artwork expresses this with precision. It was in this very regard that critic Rossana Bossaglia wrote “Plevano translates his intellectual reflections on being and living in refined and precious geometrisms (…) but which also involve his most profound impulses”. And the drive to share all is absolute.
Happily, if you’re passing by no.103 at any time you’ll always find the doors to the building open. Once across the threshold, you’re immediately welcomed by Plevano’s permanent gallery of artworks, talking eloquently of the artist himself and “his” Chiavenna, to anyone prepared to “listen”. And if one is lucky enough to meet him on one of his regular Chiavenna sojourns don’t be surprised if he’s prepared to open up his world to all and sundry.
