Marcello Ruvidotti, A Puro Caso, 2022

“After my grandmother’s death a box was found containing the correspondence between her and my grandfather. Correspondence started in 1941, during the Second World War. My grandfather was an Italian guy, sent to the front in Albania during the Epirus campaign. My grandmother, a Lombard girl, began to write as a voluntary soldier’s pen friend. They met by chance and from this exchange of letters they fell in a love that lasted until the end of the war, despite the adversities: the deportation of him by the Nazis after the armistice, his internment, his escape from the camps. This work, which wants to be the first of three parts, examines the first period of their story, from the first ink sheets, through a story of discovery and expectations, up to the period of the first return to Italy, where it will take place the first meeting. I tried to trace a path of the places from which he wrote and I started traveling: some I found, other places I went near, others I imagined and have become suggestions.” – Marcello Ruvidotti