(from the production book 1993)
Tamaro. Stones and angels. Mario Botta and Enzo Cucchi
(A dream becomes reality)
My film is about two artists: one from the mountains, the Italian-Swiss architect Mario Botta, who built a chapel - and the other, the artist: Enzo Cucchi, a man of the sea, who painted the frescoes in it, one of which is 70 metres long.
Enzo Cucchi, one of the Italian "Transavanguardia", refused to accept the direction painting was taking in Italy in the Seventies. At the same time, Mario Botta was also moving towards a form of architecture that differed completely from traditional tendencies.
In the Eighties these two artists met in Zurich and decided to create something together. Ten years later their dream became reality in the southern Swiss Canton Ticino, 20 kilometres from Lugano on the Mount Tamaro, 1600 metres above sea level.
Both artists are endowed with the gift of being able to perceive and sense their innermost feelings and to create clear visual images of them. There are affinities between the primitivism of Enzo Cucchi's paintings and Mario Botta's architecture. Botta's chapel brings to mind the solidity of a mountain refuge, whilst Cucchi's frescoes depict his visions of the South, of the sea: the mountains and the sea finally brought together.
The Swiss Paul Giger composed the music. All his CD are published by ECM Munich ("Chartres" 1989, "Alpstein" 1991 with Jan Garbarek and Pierre Favre, "Schattenwelt" 1993).
In making this film (in Rome, Ancona, Padula and Lugano) I hope to share my enthusiasm and tell the story of my journeys with Cucchi to Botta's mountain. The harmony of ideas between architect and artist, the creation of the different frescoes in this chapel "created by four hands", is the theme of the film which is a "film in progress".
Villi Hermann