Giustina Prestento

Giustina Prestento  (Gorizia 1925 - Roma 2008)

Giustina Prestento is first and foremost a performance artist. She developed her choreographic and pantomimic language through continual contact with contemporary music (Berio, Nono Petrassi etc). However, she is most remembered for her pictorial and graphic work. Prestento creates her drawings or paintings using  codified sign language, a kind of cheironomic transcript or neumes which appear to recover original marginal notations in a musical script. The signs mimic musical movement, melodies or simply a single chord or rhythmic sequence. All of Prestento’s work hinges on the contrast between music and the graphic representation of sounds. The abstract or informal aspect of her signs permeate from a kind of scripture that is already symbolic and devoid of grammar, in that it refers to an arbitrary musical notation and not a codified alphabet. The result is a colorless score of aleatory music, gestures, tingles, and musical vibrations for the eyes. A picture can consist of a single gesture, such as the twisting of an ascending musical scale or an arpeggio. This aesthetic result is by far the most original and productive of her work.

(Gianni Garrera)