Allievi del Torrente

“Allievi del torrente” for “Da Parigi a Parigi, via mare” – pinned watercolors and haikus, 2025. At Fantoni Hub, Bergamo.

For this project I ventured into something I had wanted for a long time: to delve deeper into a place, dear to me, which several times, somehow called me back to return, during different moments of my life,
Moments of joy, lightness, but also moments of important and uncomfortable choices.

I’m talking about the path to the pools of Bonacina, a town in Lecco.
A place that completely changes its appearance a few meters from the town centre, in particular from the Sant’Egidio church, a small deconsecrated church undergoing restoration.

Here the “Caldone” stream descends, born from the confluence of various waterways in the area of Monterone.

A little stream known almost only by the people of Lecco, but which has become the main source of inspiration for this project, taking on a role similar to a teacher or a brother.

The stream creates sounds, sometimes very loud, but never really annoying or irruptive.
A sound in which the silence of the heart is not profaned, but preserved.
It sings without making “noise”.

The stream flows, does not hold within itself and does not pay attention to compromises in its path and it finds its strength and beauty in this.
The stream knows how to blend harmoniously with its surroundings while remaining itself.
It transforms the rocks on which it flows into sculptures and irrigates the earth it passes by, bringing life.

From January until early June I went to this place several times, at different times of the day, attending to the delicate awakening from winter to spring and the antechamber of summer.

The writings that accompany the illustrations are found in a meeting place between small poems, western haikus and prayers.

A depiction of the interior pilgrimage that man makes during his solitary walks immersed in nature, descending into himself.

Nature is the main channel, but also silence.

A silence that recalls another silence, the same of the human spirit, more and more difficult to listen to nowadays.