Thoughts

....A man, when he has in him and communicates love, faith and a sense of life, can be called a true human being. And so it was, for those who knew Volturno Morani.......
......He never sought happiness for himself but went in search of bliss in order to give it to others ......he was luminous if you showed him affection, because he felt and led you to feel the relationship with God.......I used the term bliss because his human desire went beyond it went into that spiritual world that leads to the Most High, to God.......
.......He loved the poor in spirit because in that way lies the path to justice, mercy, peace.
........Volturno used his creativity through a new symbolic, single-minded language, which led him to be the father of Neo-constructivism and inserted a new figuration in sacred icons, charging them with living and intense spirituality ......
.....And he read the cosmos with a new alphabet, anticipating for us the light of the ultimate.....he proclaimed with his works the gladness of body and face with a discourse of bliss, that gladness that leads to interiority, that raises the trampled hearts, the hypoxies of social hierarchies and following Jesus he went further, to those who are poor in humanity and therefore in God.....
..............even at the end of his earthly existence he sought the way to sit at the divine banquet with that serenity and love of the pure , always wanting to bear fruit for others , to open new paths toward the direction of God's sure and wise life........
.........egli left behind not silver and gold but teachings and moral values, that is, the gifts that have no magical power: the divine nature.

F.M.

.....hospitality was their greatest asset. What struck me about their home was the very unique decor, in which the colors of the walls and the pictures of the hanging paintings did not clash as is the case in many other homes. On the contrary, they complemented each other by blending.
Only the frames acted as a border between those very similar colors.....these hues were to my particular liking because they faded, very gradually, from dark blue to light blue without chromatic exaggeration.....
.....frequently attending Morani House, I realized that the architect's proposed theme was the ultra-dimensional one of faith and a geometric spirituality ....
......many of Prof. Volturno's paintings depicted a conception of the infinity of the cosmos in a divine key.
...Volturno was able to combine the perfection of earthly mathematics with the balance and peace that await the believer ....I would say that he wanted to communicate to us artistically the existence of a direct thread between these two realities that he represented with red ...... that red that I was never able to fully appreciate .... .perhaps because it indicated that faith that even as a child I lived in a discontinuous way......Volturno was yes an artist , but an exceptional one,....I would say with a football metaphor that he was that“ number ten” that my team never had....
....What matters most, however, is that a mind like his left a testimony of Faith not so much in a green rectangle as in the family and on “rectangles” to be framed....

S.F.B.

....Few people express their “self” externally. Many of us are ordinary people in the human crowd ....those few who make their mark are either madmen or artists.........Volturno was a great artist who stood out from the crowd and left so much to everyone who knew him......decisive mannerisms, but whose smile was a tender weapon of seduction............
.....he lived in a particular way........I always had the impression that he had an “English cowboy” style-a style all and only his own.........an affable and generous person in whose eyes one could only read the passion for his great loves: family and painting.......
......Mr. Volturno was a man who lived his greatness with modesty.....he is among us......ordinary people disappear, special people leave so much after them that no one can think of their end......
.....Fortunate was he who knew him and owns part of himself.......the colors of his paintings are the colors of life.....
.......egli is now painted among his characters in the glory of God.

T.M.

.....una of the things Volturno was saying with his paintings: there is a goal toward which to strive, which is also the primordial source of human action, but - above all - of human dreaming.
...This primordial energy and at the same time target of the Arrow - Man that crosses Time is Love, which - coincidentally! - is red, like the first visible light radiation. It is up to each of us to specify the meaning of Love, even through the daily modulation of rationality which, at the moment of its most mature expression, can only be blue ( or indigo, or violet) .
....The highest introspective capacity of the intellect is where it reaches the awareness that the Divine beyond us begins with a drop( red) within us.
...If this drop serves as our compass, then our earthly time will be life and not just survival, and, our time fulfilled, we will be able to cross the swamp of death to approach the light of God
.....Volturno, white-haired, stern in frown, but affable in speech; admirable care of his garden, fascinating painter's sensitivity and architect's rigor......

B.

...cultured and at the same time simple person; cheerful and positive, he gave me an inner strength that lasted over time....I hear his voice and enthusiasm, the deep way he spoke about his painting.
....I remember my first visit to one of his exhibitions, he took my soul and lifted it up like the hymns of his paintings to our Lord; I immediately understood his great spirituality.
.....I remember his continuous growth in art, that profound and sacred art capable of enrapturing me with the Madonna of the third millennium: that face of mystical beauty expressing an unearthly spirituality.
.....this was and is the master, his faith was tangible and he had the gift of transmitting to us the love for God.
...architect I will always carry her in my heart.......

M.T.D.

...A man who lived to give....
...to give something to Christ, for whom and in whom he lived each of his days...
...to give something to the world he lived in and the world to come....
his works bear witness to that ...
...to give something to all the people with whom he related ...
to give so much ,even to me! So much that I felt part of his family,....
....a great man, a great father....
.....which I will never forget!...

C.R.

...I can only try to describe how much he passed on to me; a person of unique courtesy and kindness, a great believer, an artist, a friend......speak of Volturno deliberately in the present tense because I am sure he is always with us.....in our meetings he tried to pass on to me what he felt while painting, and this is not easy to understand, but, perhaps I can make it better understood with a meditative phrase from the Taoist master Deng Ming Dao who describes art this way:
Art: There is nothing left to paint; we have already seen it all... There is nothing left to sing.... The avant-garde of yesteryear becomes background music....
.....Of these and other things I was talking to Volturno.....
....in a world where art seems to be a futile thing, it is difficult to keep one's creativity alive ....the only way to find sources of inspiration is to dig into ourselves. In a sense, the extreme pluralism of our day has exempted us from the obligation to conform to others.... This reality also reflects the more sophisticated conception of the divine.....
....Personally I think that these few and small ideas and emotions that were exchanged, Volturno as an artist and yours truly as a thinker, not very knowledgeable about art but knowledgeable about life give an outline, or at least make it clear, how great was Volturno Morani's creed and what a pure soul he was....Have a good trip Volturno, when you want to come visit me.....

A.T.

.... “An artist with soul and brush guided by the hand of God”...

....I did not meet an ordinary person, but a man, a gentleman of very polite, respectful manners, almost belonging to the past, particularly cultured, with strong personality, a father, a theologian, an artist, but above all a Christian artist.
.....I also remember him for that tough character of his, his certainties, often mistaken for stubbornness, for his generosity and 'extreme trust in others that, at times, bordered on naiveté, for his stubbornness and constancy, his love for a family rich in values.....
....the artist, the man of faith had two great certainties: Providence and the existence of God. He perceived them and that is precisely why his works express such strength and the consistent search for the Light, the Hereafter, the Other Dimension, everything that binds earth and sky, man and spirit........
....io I walked with him a few moments of his last “earthly” years, but enough to draw so much inner richness from it, how fortunate for those who walked with him longer stretches of his pregnant life.....

M.P

The Diver

( Nuestars vidas son los rios
que van derechos al mar
.............................)
Line stretched out
oblique in space meeting another
dimension
you have immersed yourself- and to what
unknown depth did you reopen
your eyes and found again
breath? Explorer of an elsewhere
imperceptible to our senses
limited are you perhaps sending me
That signal we have not had time
To agree upon? In the buzz
Of sounds and vibrations and music
blurred and indistinguishable that besiege me
how will I recognize your
almost forgotten voice whispering
the words of that
remote poem you had
promised me?
.................................

L. T.

......In these days Volturno is back among us, brother friend, an image that the marks of time have never scratched. ....
.....his great strength was in the simplicity of a man of great moral uprightness who, with his explosive and strong-willed personality, retained the great charm of an unwavering belief in the face of life's difficulties......
......great artist, poet, man of faith, friend of all to whom we have given too little, unfortunately...

M.C.G.E.M.