REDUCI DI AMERICA, CAPITULO NOVANTA

Peter Ruta sul Terrazzo de Le Sirenuse. copyright massimo capodanno
Peter Ruta e Enzo Esposito
copyright massimo capodanno
Ricevo questo articolo da Suzanne Ruta, moglie del pittore statunitense Peter Ruta che da qualche giorno è a Positano e desidero renderlo pubblico. Sto seguendo questo artista 90enne americano quasi ogni giorno perchè è una persona affascinante che ha amato e ama tuttora Positano. foto massimo capodanno

REDUCI DI AMERICA, CAPITULO NOVANTA di Suzanne Ruta
>
> La rucola e buona, arrugala is a good thing, says Enzo Esposito, who has
> invited us to spend three whole blessed weeks with him in Positano, where
> he runs the gallery-restaurant Mediterraneo. Why he should bother to
> pronounce himself on the subject of a common roadside weed, a common
> garden plant that garnishes each dish he serves (mozzarella and tomatoes
> on a bed of arrugala, four kinds of sharp cheese on a bed of arrugala, radicchio and lettuce) is not clear to him. Why anyone should have an opinion about arrugala is not clear to him, but his view is simple--arrugala is good.
> Does he hear us, does he understand when we three reduci, sfollati,
> superstiti from the last year of the Bush presidency, explain that
> arrugala could cost Obama the election, come next fall. arrugala in the US is a
> food for connaisseurs, snobs, the elite, people who shop at pricey organic
> food stores, and somehow it has become known that OBAMA favors arrugala
> which proves, his opponents claim, that he is out of touch with ordinary
> hard working people, who eschew bitter Italian weeds in favor of dishes
> like chicharron, pig skin or cracklin fried in deep fat, lard, manteca,
> a campesino treat that BUSH sr. claimed he loved.
> No one believed him, he lost his second term, his son got the message
> and moved to a dry dismal ranch in west Texas and reinvented himself
> as a ranch hand, spending his days cutting brush etc.
> On such details the fate of what was once called the free world hangs,
> or does it? Living in the US you can lose perspective.
> It's so good to be out of the US sighs Jack Dowling,
> an American painter who last saw Positano in 1978. In the early
> 60s he was Edna Lewis designated driver, he has brought his drivers
> license to prove it, issued 1959, vale per un anno, his photo shows a sweet faced
> slick down hair, who grew up to be a grizzled, slightly dour but quite
> kind old guy looking back with something like astonishment at the privileged
> years he spent in the old Positano, so different from the new. The new positano is all shops and cafes cheek by jowl, that seem to want to
offer one more proof, if it were needed, of the truth, as incontrovertible
as la rucola e buona, that le monde est un marche, il monde e un mercato,
the business of the planet is business.
Fascination with the good old days when Positano had two hotels, one
boutique and one night spot -buca di bacco - where the customers improvised
a dance floor with their own record collections, is at least part of Enzo's
project, his generosity to artists old enough to remember when it was that way.
After lunch on a bed of rucola he organizes an outing to Fornillo beach for
his two painters, Dowling 76 and Ruta 90, who did his last best work in
Positano in 1963.
order what you like, we'll go down in the elevator, Enzo reassures Ruta, who
gets off the elevator at Fornillo, walks right through the cafe and on to
the beach, where he disappears among the Dantesque boulders for the next three hours,
painting a gouache of torre clavel, from a privileged if rocky angle.
He wants nothing from the bar but a cup of water to clean his brushes.
A plein air painter, for many decades now, un novantenne in gamba, Enzo
calls him, a man of ninety who's still going strong.
I have no projects, Enzo insists, I dont go looking for people, I sit here
and they come and find me. In fact there are two versions of how he met
Ruta. The first is factual but also remarkable: five years ago after a long
absence from Italy, Ruta began painting in Rome where he met Mischa Wegner,
who in the 50s lived next door to him on via Pasitea. Ruta lived in the
house of 1942, lived next door with his parents, the brave exile journalist Armin
Wegner and talented ceramic and textile designer Irene Kowaliska. Wegner, now an
Italo-German architect with five beautiful Italian children, Giulia, Sandro,
Fiametta, and the others, introduced Ruta to Esposito in 2007.
But thereàs another version of the story, fantastical, mystical and possibly
more true. Enzo, the de facto archivist of Positano cinquante anni fa, recently came
into possession of a big book of beautiful paper where a Russian emigre painter
named Zagoruko, invited guests and friends to sign, when they came to
see his work exhibited in Positano. Zagoruko died in 1962. In August 1956,
he had a show in Positano, the date is written at the top of the page in
red, below we find the signatures
Wanda Belgrado Esposito
Gianfranco Esposito
Enzo Esposito
Peter Ruta

Enzo was twelve that year, Peter was thirty-eight, they were in the same
room at the same time and walked right by each other. But destiny was written on
the page, and was fulfilled fifty years later, in 2006, when Esposito, hung
Rutaàs paintings in his gallery on via Pasitea. Mektoub they say in Arabic,
as it was written in Yiddish they say - beshert.
Susanne Ruta
SR Positano maggio 2008