by Pasquale Leccese
I’ve known Marlene for over thirty years. I had fallen in love with some of her small paintings in Kassel for Documenta, curated by Kasper Köning. I knew her art dealer in Amsterdam, Paul Andriesse. Like me, he had just opened his own small gallery, so I called him. We linked up, and I met Marlene: we hit it off immediately; she was sunny and always smiling. We discovered we had a shared love for opera and certain singers, first of all, Mario Lanza. In the mid-1980s, I visited her several times in her canal-side atelier, studio, house and warehouse. A few years later, she bought a barge to live with her partner and her little girl, Helena, the muse of many of her paintings. Today Helena is married to a big guy of Caribbean origin, the mother of a beautiful child, and Marlene is a happy grandmother.
We did many exhibitions together. An extraordinary one was in Siracusa, a tribute to Santa Lucia and Caravaggio. We stayed there for a week, and Marlene was dazzled by our South. She, born in South Africa, feels the South of the world like a magnetic needle. They were magical days of sunshine and waterfronts, encounters and stories, from Magna Graecia to fishermen’s tales and street markets. I recall her stunned by the cries of the fishermen selling swordfish and when one of them gave her the fish’s “sword” as a gift; moved, she took it, handed it to me as a relic and said: “this you must mail to me in Holland”.
We then met in Venice, where Angela Vettese, director of Bevilacqua La Masa, invited her for a solo exhibition curated by Gianni Romano in the fantastic venue of Palazzetto Tito. More memorable days were yet to come between art and the Laguna. A friend of mine lent me a boat; so, along with the inseparable company of a Dutch lot, I rode her through off-limit areas, similar to the Mekong, beyond the Giudecca, towards Jesolo; total wilderness just a stone’s throw from the hubbub of Piazza San Marco. On our way back, a glass of wine was waiting: Marlene only drinks wine; wine is part of her family legacy.
From then on, her ties to Italy fastened. She started to search for inspiration in Italian cinema, mainly through Michelangelo Antonioni and Pier Paolo Pasolini. In a show held at Palazzo delle Stelline in Milan. She pays tribute to Pasolini through a series of portraits, among which Mamma Roma is dedicated to the actress Anna Magnani. In short, a tireless Marlene, divided between the north, Amsterdam, a dynamic city with a cold climate but where art plays a fundamental role in the country’s life, and her native south, with its strong racial conflicts, but with a generous and beautiful natural environment.
Marlene is a white woman with a black heart. Black and white are the substance of her works. Inks, pencils and oils, always black and white constantly overlapping. She would often share her childhood memories of her life on the wine farm in the Johannesburg countryside. I have never once heard Marlene talk about holidays; for her, travel has always been about work and discovery. I, however, wanted to introduce her to my south. Luckily, the right occasion occurred after the exhibition at the MoMA in New York. One evening she told me that she wanted to give her daughter and her dear and inseparable friend, Marïjkevsn van Warmerdam, an artist herself, a present. She wanted to take them to a place they had never been before and spend a week with them. In awe, I replied: come to Puglia! Eventually, after thousands of phone calls, they arrived. I don’t know whether it was the many olive trees, the scorching August sun, the air Marlene immediately felt at home. She kept singing. She liked the sound of the word ‘trulli’ and confused it with truly. Soon, trulli truly became a tongue twister.
Pasquale Leccese
Born in Bari in 1957. He has two children J. Vito and Paolina. In 1986 he opened the gallery Le Case d’Arte in Milan, collaborating with international art and design magazines. In 1983 he edited a column for DOMUS magazine involving artists such as Sol Lewitt, George Condo, Gilbert and George, Mimmo Paladino, Miguel Barcelò and others. In 1998 he co-curated with Mariuccia Casadio and Franca Sozzani the exhibition “A noir, il nero. Identità di un colore contemporaneo” at the Milan Triennale. In 2012 he curated the exhibition “Alighiero Boetti” at the Sprueth Magers Gallery in London. In 2013 he curated with Federico Luger the show ‘The immigrants’ during the Venice Biennale at Giudecca. He was artistic director of Miart Contemporary Art Fair in Milan from 2001 to 2007. He was president and founder of the Associazione delle Gallerie Milanesi Start Milano from 2006 to 2012. He has been guest professor for art management lessons at Cleac Univerità Bocconi, Iulm, Naba Milano. He designed the Panama Pavilion with Richard Prince at the 2007 Venice Biennale. He was a gardener at the Hotel Splendor in Milan, curated by Traslochi Emotivi 2014. He participated in the Vegetal Import Festival at Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich during Manifesta 2016. He coordinated the meeting “Al cuor non si comanda. Il cervello e il cuore tra arte e neuroscienza” (Postmediabooks). He interviewed as art editor-at-large of the magazine CollectibleDry several personalities including Lisetta Carmi, William Burroughs, John Waters, Lee Ranaldo, Richard Prince, Luciano Canfora, Ugo La Pietra. In 2018 he made the docufilm on the artist Ernest Werner for the association Amici di Ernest Werner, Fasano.
He participated for two years in the committee of the Festival dei Sensi. In 2000 he returned to Apulia and, with his former partner, the gallery owner Monika Sprueth, decided to buy a trulli estate, Masseria Leccese, in Settarte, Ostuni. He grows olive trees and, in summer, promotes meetings and residencies with international artists: the German artist Andreas Schulze has created a fresco in an old chicken coop; Traslochi emotivi has built a think tank made of abandoned doors; Marta Dell’Angelo an igloo of ivy. He works with Franco Fasano, La ceramica di Grottaglie. The musician Lee Ranaldo (ex Sonic Youth) dedicated one of his songs entitled Lecce after a memorable duo. He founded mynewoffice, a series of impromptu offices he found around the world. The photographs taken have been collected in a book (Postmediabooks, 2021). He set up the Facebook page Salviamo la Concattedrale di Taranto with testimonials from his dear friend Lisa Licitra Ponti.