Home > My land Tibet - Selected works 1977-2007. Wandering anthology
The first of January of 1950 Radio Peking announced that the People's Liberation Army was "to free" Tibet: I was just born. When I started to express myself by drawing, this "presence" entered on my working sheet and still accompanies me.
So, this is a kind of a diary that now I recompose by picking up the pages made of my paintings. My land Tibet is a history of passion, like many. Its peculiarity is in being told by drawing, on paper, systematically and faithfully for many years. Often, it was the Sacred Mountain, drawn and well identifiable, other times the "presence" is inserted between the fold of the work discreetly; like a wind blowing changes a scrap of cloth into a prayer.
My very first memory is a "Country of the Snows" without place and name, in a comic strip for the children, in the last fifties: high mountains, white slides.
Then, my reads in the seventies, with scarce pictures. Few newspaper snippets, almost nothing witnessing the "horror in progress" in the "Country of the Snows".
In the summer of 1969, I had the first physical meeting: at the Tibet House in New Delhi, the photo of a soldier in a purchased small book, then drawn on the sheet of the Paese degli Dei (Country of Gods).
The works of this "diary" have been chosen between those catalogued. Inspired or "contaminated" there are many others and still lives with a Kangling, school exercises, tibetan murales...
The two big watercolour drawings starting this path are representative of the years between the seventies and the eighties, with figures (many feminine) always in the foreground. Strongly expressive in the faces and in the gestures. The feminine figures are a constant in the winding up of the histories: from the old prayer of the ... "names of god" almost in fusion with the incarnate baby Tentsing, through the mothers and the grandmothers of the legends until the last trip of Alexandra David Neal.
My land Tibet is also a sticker on the blue door of my own study. The door opens on the Paese degli dei (Country of the Gods) the little hand of the princess Pema Choki "Lotus of the joyful faith" falls upon the eyes that look towards Tibet from Nathu La pass, in 1948. Will Gods win?
The Buddhacärita and the celebration of the historic Buddha's deeds written in the models of a precise iconography. The Vittoria su Mara (The Victory over Mara) is totally Tibetan; reinterpretation of the assalto dei demoni (Demons assault) of the little chapel-cave of the Kyangphu monastery is strongly sensual and terrifying, like in the original now destroyed.
It is the mountain still not possessed, the labyrinth of the Serpiformi dei (Gods in shape of snakes).
An autumn evening, a missing path: an opened window towards the nothing. The suspended moment of the feminine intense sight that rises from the tea cup is captured over there forever. Perhaps I was the woman, maybe it was me in the labyrinth.
In the Cerimonia dal libro tibetano dei morti (Ceremony from the Bardo Thodol) there are no metaphors, it is a teeming of creatures and stars, astonished eyes, little lives, it speaks of Man and his death.
L'intervento al vallo delle mura in Lecco ("the Intervention at the Rampart of the Walls", exhibition with installation, 1987) is devotional, like will be Milarepa. In my "diary" it precedes to reveal. A solitary, colossal work: about five hundred flags of prayers, many printable from the original matrix, other painted with gods and symbols of many faiths. Small flags given at the end of that meeting: like to dissolve a mandala of sand with the palm of the hand...
The creation of the Milarepa occupied many months in 1991 (international year of Tibet).
From the side panels that extend like open arms, the shaking and twisting (in the "crimes" and the "trials") find the quiet in the centrality of his freedom. The saint hermit is enclosed in his "cave-womb-root". Little women slide on the sheets telling: histories of hate and vengeance, of love and pain; of erudition. Behind the saint, the ice, the mountain is not anymore a dark an menacing thing: it is sacred.
And it is the great Kailãs, the Sacred Mountain par excellence, Kang Rimpoche, that reveals in the seventh plate, from the lake to the horizon. Small figures of monks, with their tiny presence, follow the boundaries: in the foreground Tenzin Gyatso looks far away.
I dieci tori (Ten Bulls) has been a backwards walk in time, in ten plates of same dimensions it winds the travel that begins with the ending of the night in the peasant father's house; at the horizon, the dome of the Kailãs elevates instead of the big summer Moon.
It is so well traced the path from Mountain to Mountain. And in my own going and coming walking half quote, the beloved images mix: they dance in the air Dakini and Yogini between the Dolomites. They fly, celestial messengers, from the abyss of the Tone to that "finger of god" planted against the sky of the Sorapis... There is a clear parallel between the "viaggiatori incantati (the Enchanted Travellers)", that with a symbolic presence accompany the long walking around the Kailãs and the trip "from dawn to new dawn" of Pino around the Pelmo mountain. Viaggiatori incantati e pellegrini (Enchanted Travellers and Pilgrims) is an epic tale of extraordinary lives, nurtured by the memory of a little traveller. It is an imaginary pilgrimage not made, nor perhaps searched. It begins with Alexandra and Yongden and it stops on the ruins, on the painter Tsering and his void canvas. But the soul, drawn, under, she is a female and she has the future in her eyes.
Pino, la Morte e il Pelmo (Pino, the Death and the Pelmo Mountain) (Il mio Kailãs - My own Kailãs)is another form of pilgrimage, it is a path of love. The Pelmo is the "throne of the gods", Tibet is the altar of the world. Mothers are positive guides, they bring on their back small Tibetan sparks: the colours in the "small carpets for the saddle" are symbols of the elements, mother chamois is the fire.
The game of the legends told by drawing continues: in the grey world of Stella Stellina little flags and kites whisper the air... the severe grandmother of the big clouds has long Tibetan plaits and mysterious words.
The words-breath are the heart of the Calendario perpetuo (Globe perpetual calendar) Faces and gestures of the Dalai Lama and his people, dissolving into twists of incense, they elevate from the sacred mountains, flowing away.
Then, going back one day to the legends, to the walls, to the peaks there it sneaks the ancient suggestion: in the heart of the rock, man is absorbed in a total communion with the Mountain: is Det like Milarepa? And the nymph, the witch, the snake?
The drawn diary ends on the last trip of Alexandra David Neal. Since childhood, in search of her own tree, to a woman that is walking, the path of that very long life is traced by her eyes, it is sky and earth, it is passion. It is a woman's history, intense; like my own.
Fate e dakini nei paesaggi di Luisa Rota Sperti di Tona Sironi Diemberger
Nelle opere di Luisa Rota Sperti il Tibet è un elemento ricorrente. Del paese delle grandi montagne e delle nevi eterne Luisa ha colto quel lato spirituale che l'uomo occidentale sogna e idealizza, il Shangrila, che lei, nella sua arte, collega al mondo delle cime dolomitiche.
Gli abitanti dei paesi alpini sanno che spiriti, folletti, streghe, fate hanno da sempre popolato rocce e anfratti delle montagne e, per chi ha sensibilità adeguata, ancora li popolano. Come le nostre, anche le valli dell'Himalaya, ne sono piene; la gente del posto conosce queste entità, le rispetta, le invoca, le teme. Sono spiriti delle acque, delle rocce, del cielo, della neve, delle montagne, a volte favorevoli agli esseri umani, a volte violenti e vendicativi. Al pari dei folletti e delle fate, delle streghe, o delle ambane, che Luisa inserisce nelle sue favole dolomitiche, anche le entità himalayane non sono sempre buone, anzi, spesso sono impietose, maligne se non addirittura feroci. Tali sono, ad esempio, i klu, gli spiriti della acque dell'Himalaya, che puniscono senza remissione chi sporca le sorgenti. Possono però essere anche entità prevalentemente benefiche come le dakini, le mitiche "danzatrici del cielo" della tradizione sanscrita e tibetana che spesso accompagnano l'asceta, l'eremita, l'iniziato sulla via dell'illuminazione.
La matita di Luisa evidenzia la presenza degli spiriti fra le rocce e i boschi delle montagne alpine, ma anche nelle immagini del suo Tibet si intuiscono le magiche presenze che, come gli abitanti delle Alpi, risiedono di preferenza in particolari ambienti. Fra questi il "paese delle dakini" mitico spazio visitato da pochi spiriti eletti che ne hanno lasciato la magica descrizione. Nel 1500 il maestro Tangton Gyalbo ebbe modo di tradurne la magia in parole: "Fra le rocce crescono cespugli, foglie, fiori, alberi. Fra i rami gli uccelli volteggiano cantando. Nelle radure pascolano le antilopi. La tigre e la gazzella riposano insieme. Mi sono sdraiato al riparo di una roccia e ho fatto un sogno.Ho visto montagne coperte di rubini e pietre preziose. Sulle cime aleggiavano gli spiriti dell'aria. Schiere di dakini coperte di rari ornamenti danzavano e portavano offerte." Per la mente tibetana questo paese mitico si identificava sopratutto con le valli dell'Himalaya che balenavano irraggiungibili agli occhi dei pastori nomadi erranti con i loro yak sull'altopiano semideserto, e attiravano magneticamente gli eremiti in meditazione negli anfratti fra le rocce. Sapevano che si fossero recati in quelle valli, fra i corsi d’acqua, gli animali satolli e i ghiacciai scintillanti come gemme preziose, con l'aiuto delle dakini avrebbero potuto percorrere la via dell' illuminazione. Queste valli, nascoste fra le altissime montagne, da secoli furono anche il luogo sognato dai tibetani per trovare rifugio in tempo di calamità, che fossero le antiche orde dei mongoli o le moderne armate cinesi. E forse anche noi potremmo pensare un giorno di vederle lasciandoci accompagnare nel nostro meraviglioso sogno dalla matita di Luisa.
My land Tibet
In the exhibition, there will be a selection of 30 books (of "images")
taken from my own "Tibetan library" of more than 150 volumes.
Luisa Rota Sperti
