2 Dossier: Art in Bonn - Portrait: Bruno Russi January 2011

The united colors of sport: Nations from World Cup 2010

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The stolen freedom: Risking life to go beyond borders

Behind every great man stands a women Margaret Russi: A wife, a supporter and a saxophonist

Gathered around our rounded globe Bruno Russi reflects a chaotic system in his work “Globalization”

The Italian artist deals this time with the issue of globalization. After

a hard work that took him many months, Russi presents in his atelier, his installation “Globalization”, a bizarre wooden construction with the globe as a central element surrounded by 14 sitting figures. It is really a curious gathering that grabs the attention immediately. Of fourteen wooden figures, which represent various cultures and creatures, sitting around a wooden construction that looks like our globe. An attempt to comprehend the chaotic system of globalization on our planet. The ball is about 2 inches in diameter, constructed by thousands of pieces of wood. “All the figures are globalizing, but they are distanced at the same time”, says Bruno. In a shape

of a circle, an Arab sits beside a Jew, an Asian sits beside an American capitalist, a European

sits beside a !sh, a Chinese sits beside a bird and many more weird combinations are there. But

the question here is, how do they communicate with each other? Isn’t each one cooking his own

recipe? “They are globalizing, but apparently each for himself”, answers Bruno. All the !gures, humans and animals are integrated in the sophisticated process of globalization, and the distance they keep re"ects that they don’t realize the consequences of this process. Russi’s sculpture “Globalization” provokes a worthy thinking process. Will the future of our world look like this....?

#Bruno´s piece “ Globalization” provokes many thoughs

PATIANCE: “Bruno has a creative and a critical way of thinking. I am used to be patiant with him so that he could come up with brilliant ideas, which he can transform into master pieces”.

FUTURE: “I am a very optimistic person so I wish that Bruno stays creative and passionate about his career, so that he produces beautiful and meaningful artistic pieces that people like”.

INSPIRATION: “Music is a language, with which one can send di$erent messages, such as love, anger, sadness, etc, and usually he makes a bridge between music and his fantasy”.

SAXOPHONE: “I !nd saxophone very erotic instrument, which has an adorable tenor sound that matchs my musical interests”.

WORK: “I work as a marketing specialist in a leisure time Services Company in Bonn “.

ENRICHMENT: “I see our relationship as a mutual enrichment , since music can act as an inspiration for art and vice versa”.

SOLIDARITY: “ I try to support Bruno by all means; sometimes I give him suggestions or feedbacks on his artistic works, and sometimes I can awake his fantasy, when he listens to me playing saxophone in his atelier”.

Bruno and Margaret Russi share a mutual love for art an music

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It is a theater of mind Where do these theater

pieces take place? Who are the actors? Which issues

are they talking about? Are these issues related to our real world ,or are they just made up? These are some questions, which come to the mind of any observer of Bruno’s pictures.

It is that creative exposure of ordinary topics in an extraordinary way. From climate change and globalization to World Cup and freedom.Some Butter"ies arrested in a sphere surrounded by barriers, which they can’t go beyond. A poor butter"y, who tried to overstep that

strings barrier, payed her life as a price for freedom. Bruno tries to send indirect meaningful messages in his pictures. With the potential he still sees in the “ strings periode”, the Italian artist points his !nger to crucial issues with a fantasy touch.

Russi´s symphony of meaningsThe Italian painter, sculptor and designer shows encoded messages in his artistic works

THE STRINGS “LANGUAGE”:

1 Dossier: Art in Bonn - Portrait: Bruno Russi January 2011

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The creative usage of strings as elementary and archaic symbols offer close to unlimited forming spectrums.

Strings are suited as stylistic instrument that shows the perspective effects of space and dynamic.

They allow to present different kinds of polarizations ranging from closeness, distance, chaos and order to humanistic emotions like feelings of calmness, stability and harmony or the perception of liaison, restriction, suffering , amusement and eroticism.

It is related to the string theory that claims that the smallest segments of our universe are shapes composed by strings.

Hoping to clarify the origin of the material, the strings and their variations open new fantastic horizons for the artistic creation.

Curious about Bruno´s strings? Different pictures drawn with strings and information about Russi´s upcoming exhibitions can be found on: www.russi.de.

By Abdallah Hamad

Art is a source for an endless joy: The Italian painter , designer and sculptor shows a fantastic world through his master pieces

“Art’s mission is to open doors to a better world and enrich the soul as well”

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Colorful pictures hanging on the walls and lay-ing on the ground, weird

sculptures of different crea-tures stand near the entrance and look in different directions and painting materials are ev-ery where. Surrounded by a creative chaos in his atelier in Bonn, the Italian artist Bruno Russi produces his master pieces joyfully. Bruno’s story with art started in the city where he was born, namely in Verona-Italy. He studied indus-trial designing at the technical institute of Verona. It was a multi-disciplinary training more than a structured study. After Bruno !n-ished his study in Verona, his curi-osity and will to see and discover the world, pushed him to join the Italian navy in the end of 50s.He was working as a radar spe-cialist and did some tasks related to sub-marines maintenance. “My relationship with the sky and the sea, helped me to know myself bet-ter”, says Bruno with deep breath. Sur!ng for almost 8 years in the Mediterranean sea, Indian Ocean and Middle Africa helped him to take the decision of starting his career as a painter. “I realized that my work in the navy doesn’t suit my freestyle character, I couldn’t stand the narrow mentality of the army, so I said adieu to that adven-ture life”, explains Bruno with wide smile. After working as a painter for a while in Italy, Russi decided to continue his world discovery trip, but this time, free from the mili-tary orders, he used to obey in the navy. With the help of some of his colleagues, he went on a journey to Germany to explore new artistic horizons there.There were a group of factors that made Russi move and stay in Ger-many beside his curiosity. Love and death; the death of his father and

meeting his wife. “Starting my ca-reer in Germany was a tough chal-lenge on the levels of language, culture and job opportunities for me as a foreign artist”, says Russi. At the end of the year 1968, he worked as technical designer for di"erent companies in Bonn where he devel-oped designs for optics appliances, glasses and furniture, parallel with his work as a painter and a sculptor. “I couldn’t work as a full time artist, be-cause I had to work to feed myself and my family”, he ex-plains. 7 years later, Bruno could start his career as full time painter, sculptor and de-signer. Since then, he established his own atelier in Bahnhofstrasse 85 in Bonn. It didn’t take him long time to be-come one of the best painters and sculptors in Bonn Rhein-Sieg Area. He joined the Federal Association of Artists of the Fine Arts for Bonn Rhein-Sieg area and became the head of Bonn artists group called Art7. A part from that he orga-

nized di"erent successful exhibi-tions; individually and in coopera-tion with other colleagues, in di"er-ent cities in Europe such as Berlin, St. Petersburg, Venice, Karlsruhe, Oxford and of course Bonn.

vary from banal to critical. ” The main di"erence between the in-terpretation of an artist and a non-artist is that the artist deals always with ideas and fantasies and ex-periment them in his mind”, adds Bruno. It’s a complexity of energy, power and !ght that Russi has to do before he draws any new picture. The choosing of colors has a great signi!cance for a per-fectionist like Bruno; each color should serve the meaning that the pictures want to convey. For example, he uses light and lively colors like red and yellow to express mean-ings like dynamic or fascination. Gray and black can express sad-ness or stolen freedom. Before he starts drawing or designing, Russi begins a deep thinking process in two worlds in which he lives at the same time; the present world and a fantasy world in which he tries to generate extraordinary composi-tions and bring them into fantastic situations. “It’s awesome to draw a man with an animal body or a

chair with human legs”, says Bruno with a light smile. Since the process of choosing the colors to put in his pictures is very important, the perfectionist artist also pays great attention to choosing the titles of his exhibitions. “Relevant, attrac-

tive and informative are the types of the titles I choose for my exhi-bition”, he boasts. But what does success mean for Bruno? What does he dream of or wish for his future artistic life?For a creative, sensitive and criti-cal artist like Russi, success is the recognition that can be seen in the eyes of the people who admire his

works, whether they are ordinary people or art collectors. “50 percent of the art-ist success depends on his creativity and ability and the other 50 percent is related to the PR campaigns he does”,

explains Bruno. He also considers it extremely important that the artist must be authentic towards himself and towards the people as well, that what makes him en-joy an internal peace. Since he is a type of person who likes to take enough time to develop an ex-cellent artistic work, Russi believes that this strings period still has po-tentials and more to be developed. “I am still working on my strings,

at the same time I am looking forward for some-thing more striking”, he says with a laugh. As he sees art as a source for an endless joy, Bruno’s imagina-tion is like an ocean full of endless treasures.

“I consider myself a

perfectionist”

Bruno called his !rst artistic form language that he used in his pic-tures “the fantastic realism”. “My !rst pictures carried social and critical meanings that showed a fantastic world, which has nothing to do with our real world” , says Russi wiping his glasses. The fantastic re-alism didn’t satisfy Bruno’s ongoing fantasy.

He wanted to go far away from hu-man !gures and step into a world of fascination and symbols; a world free from limita-tions and obliga-tions that can be found in the real

world. “In the world of symbols, the observer can #y with his fan-tasy to see large scopes that in-clude di"erent meanings and feel-ings shaped with round or spiky shapes”, explains Bruno. The multi-talented 68 year-old artist created a new artistic model, which he transformed to his pictures. In-spired by the strings theory, Russi developed an artistic language; composed by strings that motivate the creativity and the fantasy of whoever looks at his pictures. He succeeded with his creativity to in-vent a new artistic form, while he was observing the strings theory. The theory inspired Bruno to think about what role can banal com-ponents like strings ( Bänder in German) play in drawing. “Strings are the main elements of our life and universe, they can entail un-limited and various meanings that can be expressed in di"erent ways”, says Bruno using expressive hand gestures. These strings entail some-times deep meanings linked to the reality and sometimes they are linked to a puzzle that the observer has to decode. In this room of freedom that Bruno creates in his work, he thinks that the interpretations of his pictures

Nastri Espressivi: The happiness of strings shap unique faces

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Strange dynamic: Expressing dynamic with colorful strings