Abstract

The Italian painter Gastone Novelli (1925–1968) met Samuel Beckett in Paris in 1960. The encounter was the culmination of Novelli's long-lasting interest in Beckett's work. The two artists established a collaboration that had a significant impact on their works. Novelli realized a series of lithographs designed to accompany L’image (1959), Beckett's pre-publication excerpt from Comment c’est (1961). This partnership (the two met on several occasions, exchanged letters and commented on each other's work) had important consequences on both Beckett's and Novelli's artistic journeys, well beyond the idea (which was never put into print) of L’image as a ‘livre d’artiste’. On the one hand, it entered – and probably changed – the genetic history of Comment c’est. On the other, it reoriented Novelli's idea of painting as language towards the more radical concept of a painting made of – and not accompanied by – words. While retrieving the aural, Joycean quality of Beckett's prose, Novelli established an interesting connection between Beckett's prose, French Nouveau Roman and Italian Neoavanguardia.

Keywords: Letters; images; intermediality; materiality; embodiment

Beckett's relationship with the visual arts, his observations on painting and his collaborative efforts with artists have been widely explored. However, while the less examined role played by Italian art in his work has gained critical attention in recent years, his aesthetic partnership with Gastone Novelli (1925–1968) has yet to be investigated.

The Birth of Novelli's Artistic Vision

Novelli was born in Vienna in 1925, the son of Margherita Mayer von Ketschendorf, a woman belonging to the old Hapsburg nobility, and Ivan Novelli, military attaché at the Italian Embassy in Austria. The family moved to Rome, where Novelli graduated in sociology and political sciences from Sapienza University. His choice of a field of study not directly connected to the visual arts is particularly relevant to Novelli's cultural outlook. He was not a painter by trade, and even when he became one, he kept a sustained interest in political, social and anthropological issues. Another key element in his life is his involvement in the Second World War. When the war broke out, Novelli joined the Resistance. He became a member of a Partisan Brigade operating in Rome. In 1943, he was arrested and tortured by the Nazis.