"... Always with the eyes and with the mind, but also with the heart, frequently with the most familiar means of drawing, like the instinctive peasant land surveyor, like certain tightrope walkers who daily reinstall, from one end of the daily life to the other die, the high ropes on which to play the dizzying paths. From one end of the surface to the other where to sow the image, I too stretch one or two or more threads, a horizon to set up a division of areas and delineate the luminous support of the sky and, further down, sow, unfolded in essentiality, the practicable portions of everyday life. I hang from that thread of high and impassable boundary in tension a mobile screen, a fabric overlaid with vegetal transparency that the breeze barely moves; or - and then the horizon flexes as if by a slight weight - a screen of distant wood "that breathes" or, with a horizontal chord firmer in tension when not fermented from within, the heavy but soft tapestry of the coming night or which is about to run out after the rush of the morning. " RB
Renato Bruscaglia (Urbino 1921 – Bologna 1999) attended the Institute for the Decoration and Illustration of the Book of Urbino, which already before the Second World War had gathered many protagonists of the Italian Graphic Art, graduating in 1941 under the guidance of Leonardo Castellani .
His activity as a teacher was of high profile which he first carried out at the same Institute – for about twenty years – holding the professorships of Drawing from Life, Decoration and Chalcographic Engraving, to then pass, in 1965, to that of Technique of the Engraving at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. In the 1967 contributed personally to the founding of theAcademy of Fine Arts of Urbino which he directed until 1971 and where he taught Chalcography until 1992. In 1966, they promoted theRaffaello Academy and the Scuola del Libr o, collaborated with the organization, together with colleagues Carlo Ceci and Pietro Sanchini, del International Summer Course of Artistic Engraving , then teaching Chalcography for twenty-five years and, at the invitation of the Fundación Rodriguez-Acosta , held a specialization course in engraving techniques in 1976 in Granada.
From 1945 to 1998 he exhibited drawings, paintings and mainly etchings in group and personal exhibitions in Italy and abroad. Among the main events in which he participated: the Italian Engraving Exhibition ofOpera Bevilacqua La Masa (Venice, from 1955 to 1965), la Venice Biennale (in 1956 and 1962), the International Exhibition of Graphics in Palazzo Strozzi in Florence (1969), the National Quadrennial of Art in Rome (1974), the IV Triennial of Engraving in Milan (1980) and has achieved important prizes. Many of Bruscaglia’s personal exhibitions in Milan, Bologna, Florence, Palermo, Ferrara and Lugano, presented by authoritative critics including GianCarlo Cavalli, Cesare Gnudi, Danilo Courir, Roberto Tassi, Mario Valsecchi, Paolo Volponi, Francesco Carnevali, Silvia Cuppini and others. last Andrea Emiliani, his loyal admirer and friend who dedicated a large and exhaustive monograph to him that accompanied the various anthologies set up after his death in 1999. His works are present in the most important public and private collections both in Italy and abroad.
In 1988 he published the result of his long artistic experience in a treatise entitled “ Intaglio etching and original fine art print”The text, out of print for some time despite re-editions and highly sought after by specialists and enthusiasts in the sector, was re-published in 2019 in a new graphic format with updated contributions accompanying the fully reproduced text. A “book of trade” – as Bruscaglia himself defined it – which has a particular importance in the publishing sector dedicated to the art of engraving, dealing in an exhaustive, but not aseptic way, all the techniques of direct and indirect intaglio engraving.
To the remarkable artistic production and the intense training activity Bruscaglia has joined a tenacious and constant commitment in the social field, spending himself personally in the enhancement of cultural traditions, think of the precious activity provided alongside Carlo Ceci for the organization of the Court Theater in the 50s and 60s, but above all in the defense, protection of the landscape and architectural heritage of Urbino and its territory. Bruscaglia said he had retained this sense of civic and intellectual duty from the teaching of Pasquale Rotondi who had entrusted him with the execution of the axonometric survey of the structure of the Doge’s Palace, aimed at the beautiful book dedicated, in the 1950s, to the “city in shape di palazzo “, published by the same Scuola del Libro.
Many battles have seen him in the front line: together with Paolo Volponi, Carlo Bo, Giancarlo de Carlo, Antonio Cederna, Andrea and Vittorio Emiliani and many others for the approval of two special laws for Urbino; in the defense of the Data rooms of the Ducal Palace of Urbino from the aggressive intervention of the architect Giancarlo De Carlo, with whom however there was a strong relationship of mutual esteem; in the battle to avoid the construction of an overpass that would have disfigured the surrounding hills in 1995, the year in which he also committed himself at an institutional level by running for mayor for the civic list For Urbino capital in the municipal elections, and being part of the council until 1997.
