ALTO ADIGE newspaper, 27 February 1976
A Gallery of Caricatures of Trentino VIPs’. Perghem’s “Capriccios”.
Critical text by Franco de Battaglia

Perghem’s latest exhibition at the “Castello” art gallery is not simply an artistic happening but also the occasion for a social event.

We can inscribe two main qualities to the versatile and restless painter Michelangelo Perghem Gelmi. He is corageous in his ability to surrender to a juvenile entushiasm for capriccios. He can use an easy, fresh style, then venture into a more complex, experimental style. He can paint with a tender and intimate tone, then surrender to a mocking, sneering trait.
In fact, he is both corageous and patient. He has waited for thirty years before publishing his prison camp sketches, the drawings that he produced during his long journey to the Polish lager camp, from Cannes to Tarnopol. He has waited for thirty years but it was well worth the wait. Now his sketchbooks are at the core of a lusciuos edition published by the Manfrini publishing house. They could inspire a lot of awe, if the material weren’t so warm and humane. The accurate and clever use of charcoal, sepias and sanguine stand out like a revelation, the drawings communicate so much emotion and render all the depth and the richness of the art of pencil and charcoal drawing, which only superficial minds relegate to second-rate means.
Perghem Gelmi has waited for thirty years to publish his prison camp drawings and almost fifty years to exhibit his caricature works about important people belonging both to the world scene and to the local public life, now showing at the Castello art gallery.
Linking together the book, published last Christmas, and the exhibition, which opened yesterday, is not down to a mere, coincidence; it is also a matter of common inspirational themes. Perghem Gelmi has always been drawn to caricature – as a matter of fact, in his “From Cannes to Tarnopol” publication, his most accomplished works are caricatures of friends or casual encounters. After that, he was cautious to pursue the genre until, while curating the publication of his thirty drawings, he re-discovered the strength and power of caricature and in a few months he labourosly produced a series of panels with partly affectionate, partly maliciuos portraits of his friends, most of whom belong to the élite of the Trento social scene. The result can hardly be inscribed under the term caricature: these works are very clever psychological portraits, on the verge of Surrealism, very well accomplished and solid, and can act as social tableaux. That is why Perghem Gelmi’s latest exhibition is not only going to be an artistic happening, but also a social event, which will be much and long talked about. And this constitutes a further hint to the painter’s corageous nature.

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