It’s hard to say goodbye to someone from whom we’ve always expected a new intuition, a deviation, a supplementary and, it is to be believed, decidedly original point of view. So much so that he who helped to define “the style” through which some generations have told themselves between music, social centers and international solidarity, has recently been working with a pencil on a sort of dictionary of uncomfortable and borderline figures from the other century, that «Nero 900» project which remains his last tribute to those who loved and appreciated him. And now, one wonders? How to do without other unedited black and white faces to which he would have attributed the ability to interrogate us with new questions? Although perhaps the figures of him with austere beauty who wore black leather jackets and ripped jeans, but had faces of romantic heroes and gazes that scrutinize the viewer, he will draw them for an even wider and borderless world.
AFTER ALL, Cristiano Rea, who died in Rome at the age of only 60, has really gone through many lives, choosing, fighting and not just drawing. Without his tables, however, a part of that story which is indeed individual, but, as he himself recently recalled when presenting at Forte Prenestino Bank!, the beautiful book edited by Federico Guglielmi for Goodfellas, which collects his work from 1977 to today, «also and above all collective», would not have been told. Because Rea has shaped an image, a “sign” that has never been just graphic, and that from punk, from the musical underground has helped to define the new face of metropolitan politics, the organized and community insubordination that has taken shape with the social centres, forever changing the lexicon of revolt. Appearing in this world from the discovery of punk and from the evenings of the early years of the Uonna club, Cristiano then lived intensely (together with Luciana, his lifelong companion and accomplice) the politics of rebellious Rome, between social centres, anti-fascism and international commitment, first in support of Chiapas and then alongside the Kurds, creating hundreds, or perhaps thousands of posters, leaflets, flyers.
Images that struck first of all for their narrative approach, capable of “telling” movements and initiatives with a “pop” spirit, but far from mainstream, probably changing what punk had done in evoking, taking at least in part game, rock’n’roll. «A few signs in black and white, photocopied badly and stuck worse, but when I came across them as a kid it was like looking into another world», recalled Zerocalcare who in the preface to Bank! he paid a debt of gratitude to Rea who “literally shaped our imagination” and “designed a gateway to that world”.
TOO DISCREET to give due importance to his work, difficult to match such a path that has crossed with curiosity four decades, Cristiano Rea will remain the “inventor” of an era for those who have admired his drawings and an unforgettable travel companion for those they were lucky enough to have him as a friend. Together with his decisive black and white, everyone will miss his strength, calm but decisive. Like that “pissed off face” that he had given to Forte Prenestino for May 1, 2020: “he has the expression that I wish we all had when we are together, we have lived, we have to live, we cannot complain”.
Tomorrow at 4 pm at Casale Garibaldi in Rome (Via Romolo Balzani 87) there will be a collective greeting to Cristiano Rea.