Il segreto dei maestri. Ritratto-Autoritratto di sette critici di Giannetto Bravi (1977-1979)

This essay examines, on the basis of previously unpublished archival material, Giannetto Bravi’s cycle Ritratto-Autoritratto di sette critici (Portrait–Self-Portrait of Seven Critics), conceived between 1977 and 1979 in collaboration with Pierre Restany and first exhibited in 1980 at Studio Marconi, Milan, with an introductory text by Filiberto Menna. Framed within the conceptual experimentation of the Campanian Neo-Avant-Garde, the project – developed with the participation of Guido Ballo, Achille Bonito Oliva, Antonio Del Guercio, Gillo Dorfles and Lea Vergine – is interpreted as a relational and co-authorial device that overturns the traditional paradigm of the portrait. It reconfigures portraiture as a form of interactive Narrative Art, grounded in the subject’s contribution through the inclusion of one or more “secret” elements. The serial photographic image is combined with heterogeneous snapshots, letters, personal mementoes, books and handwritten texts, which become instruments of self-representation and catalysts for a layered analogy between image, identity and memory, while engaging in a close dialogue with Nouveau Réalisme. By integrating art-historical, sociological and psychoanalytic perspectives, Bravi’s work – shaped as an autodidact within the milieu of militant criticism – recasts the master–pupil relationship along democratic, horizontal and participatory lines, dismantling its traditional hierarchies and outlining a renewed artistic pedagogy rooted in reciprocity.