It was in the very early’30s, hard years that conceded nothing to hedonism, that Ezio Gribaudo during his first day of school in a Turin kindergarten was struck by the graffiti like etching of Pinocchio on the desk. The encounter with this attempt to give form to that which is shapeless by creating beauty took on the value of such an enthralling event as to make it the pivotal point on which he then built his life.
In this documentary, ninety-year-old Gribaudo welcomes us to his studio, a Wunderkammer with large windows that frame the Mole and the snow-capped Alps, a room overflowing with canvases, photographs, dinosaurs, bird cages, theaters of memory, pyramids and the tools of his life-long trade. He tells us that there has never been day when his hands have not traced a drawing on paper, given birth to a sculpture, a painting or created artefacts of all sorts; that never ceased being animated by the curiosity to experiment with techniques, materials, tools, to attempt any sort of craft. The freshness and playfulness, the poetry of his first encounter with art still linger in his eyes. It is thanks to all of the traits that Gribaudo was able to conceive the enigma of the logogrifi and flongs, saccogrifi and metallogrifi.
During his life he has been consecrated with some of the greatest tributes in the world (XXXIII Venice Biennale (1966), IX National Quadrennial of Art in Rome (1965), IX Biennial of San Paolo in Brazil (1967), and was awarded the Gold Medal of Benemeriti della Cultura by the President of the Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (2003) for his artistic career and international fame. Today his works are exhibited in some of the most beautiful temples of art: MoMA in New York, Museum of Imagination in Hudson, Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Ca 'Pesaro in Venice, Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, Petit Palais Musée d'Art Moderne in Geneva, Kunstverein in Göttingen, Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, the Albertina Fine Arts Academy and the National Museum of the Risorgimento in Turin.
Walking around Turin, he vehemently depicts a portrait of a gray city prone to power, with which he did not want to identify himself; we follow him to Moncalieri and attend the unveiling of his last and most recent work: a white on white dinosaur engraved on the side of a splendid prototype designed by Giorgietto Giugiaro. Gribaudo becomes heated speaking against the paradoxical rhetoric of ugliness that informs so much contemporary art and exalts the saving function of beauty. He assures us that the future is still full of promise.
Thus the singular story of an artist who was capable of shaping his life on his vocation, surprisingly expanding his boundaries and his chance to experience the world, parades before our eyes. While watching this documentary, the legacy of Gribaudo is in our hands: the luminous example of a life constantly oriented towards what really animated it, the ability to infuse it with new lifeblood, and thus give it its fullest sense.