The artistic processing of papier-mâché to set up parade floats with giant puppets on top

 

The artistic processing of papier-mâché takes hold in Putignano, as already seen, around the 40s. An art that notoriously uses poor materials such as newspaper, specifically daily paper, glue obtained from the mixture of water and flour and then acrylic colors to paint the artifacts.

 

The processing starts from the 3D realization of the paper sketch, a clay bas-relief is molded which constitutes the positive. Once this cast has been worked, the negative is obtained by pouring liquid plaster on the positive.

 

The negative, otherwise known as the "female" of the cast, will be used as a three-dimensional guide for the application of newspaper clippings dipped in the flour glue which will then generate the product. For the storage of the newspapers, they tended to be separated by color, so the newspapers of the famously pink "Gazzetta dello Sport" were put on one side, then those of "Il Sole24Ore" in a powder beige color, those of "Italia Oggi" recognizable because they are yellow and finally all the rest of the white newspapers. The motivation for this subdivision is linked to the processing and specifically to the overlapping of the layers, in fact a minimum of mechanical resistance to shocks of the works is superimposed on multiple levels of newspaper, from 3 to 4. In this regard, to highlight uniformity and completeness of each level you use the newspaper differentiates. For example, knowing that the first layer is pink, the second is yellow and the third is white, allows us to establish that the artifact is in the first, second or third step.

 

Once the raw material has been obtained, the papier-mache master moves on to the finishing phase through coloring. Acrylic colors are used. We proceed first to the bases and then to the shades to accentuate features or lights and shadows.

 

This artistic technique, in addition to these more or less known ingredients, also presents tricks and secret working methods that the papier-mache masters jealously hand down from generation to generation.