Guarneri Olivieri Verna - THE SEVENTIES Thu 25 February 2016 - Fri 29 April 2016
GUARNERI OLIVIERI VERNA, THE SEVENTIES
Curated by Ivan Quaroni
Inauguration on Thursday, February 25th 2016, 6.30 pm
From February 25th to April 29th 2016
The Milan-based Progettoarte elm gallery, focusing on its Analytical Painting artists promotion and enhancement path, after the personal exhibitions dedicated to Pino Pinelli (2013), Marco Gastini (2012), Claudio Verna (2012), Enzo Cacciola (2010), is happy to introduce the Guarneri, Olivieri, Verna The Seventies Exhibition.
On this occasion, about twenty paintings dating back to the Seventies will be exhibited. The Seventies were the years when the three artists’ intuitions reached a brand new expressive ripeness, later on variously called by the critics with the following terms: Analytical Painting, Painting Painting and New Painting, a trend confirmed by the parallel and contemporary enquiries of French painters “Suppori/Surface” and German Painters (Analytische Maleri and Geplante Malerei). The present works show how Guarneri, Olivieri, Verna’s researches are associated by a common return to painting’s basic values, to the fundamentals based on light, sign and colour.
Rising from the ashes of the Informal, but equally far from the experimentations on the zero degree of painting, this new sensitiveness – today rightly rediscovered and reassessed by the market as well - stands out for the focus on the system of relationships within painting and for the analysis of its essential words, freed from any descriptive function.
Narration and representation perceived as non essential elements actually make room for an enquiry on movement, luministic vibration, rhythmic pulsation and deep color. The result is a “slow perception” painting, that urges the observer to have a prolonged vision, especially in the case of Riccardo Guarneri, who, by identifying colour with light, paints almost white paintings, featuring a watermark of thin signs that highlights the impalpable of the colour paste.
Claudio Olivieri as well, works above all in the early Seventies with a language that combines the sign of color, in which however you can already perceive an interest in the building of fluid shapes, with no plasmatic masses surfacing the canvas background. Influenced by Gestald theories and by perception-related problems, Verna is the most interested artists among the three in the geometric shapes and rhythmic partitions. In his canvas the colour is organised in uniform crosshatches, often featuring rectangles, lozenges and colour bands that highlight the specific procedure of his painting. This exhibition, more than forty years after, is a unique opportunity to estimate the linguistic rigour of Guarneri, Olivieri and Verna through a selection of works painted between 1970 and 1979. The Seventies actually represent a crucial period, compressed in-between the heritage of Poverist formulations and the future transavangard ferments in which these artists, together with other members of that mobile and fluid group of personalities that was Analytical Painting, claimed the autonomy and radicalness through the return to a primary language that was at the same time severe and lyrical.
Biographies
Riccardo Guarneri
Born in 1933 in Florence, where he lives and works. After a short informal season since 1962, he has started a research based on sign and light, that has become his main objects of study, within a minimal geometric layout.
He debuts in Aja in 1960 with his first personal exhibition. Later on, he takes part to 1966 Biennale di Venezia (with Agostino Bonalumi and Paolo Scheggi), and to the Weiss auf Weiss exhibition at Kunstalle di Berna, as well as at Biennal Paris in 1967 in the “New Proposal” section. In 1972 he holds his first retrospective exhibition at Westfalischer Kunstverein in Munster and later on he is present at the Four-Years Exhibitions in Rome in 1973 and in 1986. In 1981 he exhibits at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome in the Linee della ricerca artistica in Italia 1960-1980 exhibition. In 1997 at Kunsthalle in Colony, in Abstrakte Kunst Italiens ’60/’90. In 2007 at Palazzo della Permanente, Milan, Analytical Painting in the Seventies. In 2008 Aniconic Painting, at Casa del Mantegna in Mantua. In 2011 he takes part to Rediscovered paths of Italian art –VAF-Stiftung 1947-2010 Foundation, at MART Trento and Rovereto. He has been teaching painting at Fine Arts Academies in Carrara, Bari, Venice and Florence.
Claudio Olivieri
Born in Rome in 1934. After moving to Milan in 1953, he attends Brera Fine Arts Academy and he is interested, in particular, in the lesson of informal art, in its many guidelines, from Fautrier to Rothko and Reinhardt. Olivieri’s quest is focused on shape-colour, colour-light, sign-space relationships, in an increasingly essential poetic speech: from suspended coloured metal frames and from complex layers of chromatic drafts crossed by tangled sign paths that highlight a dynamic component (typical of the works from the Seventies), he has been increasingly focusing on analysing transparency and brightness in a continuous pictorial space, capable of expressing sensations and feelings. Olivieri presents works in various editions of Biennale di Venezia (1966, 1980, 1986, 1990), at Documenta in Kassel (1977), at Quadriennale di Roma (1998), in thematic exhibitions about the colour and Italian art and in numerous man shows, from the Milan-based ones to the Galleria del Milione (1969, 1971, 1975, 1988) and PAC Milan (1982), up to the retrospective exhibition organised in Conegliano in Palazzo Sarcinelli, headquarters of the Municipal Art Gallery (2001). Retrospective exhibitions include the ones at Casa di Mantegna in Mantua (2002); Rocca Paolina in Perugia (2003) and at Diocesan Museum of Milan (2007).
Claudio Verna
Born in Guardiagrele, in the province of Chieti, in 1937. From 1942 to 1956 he has been studying in Umbria, then at Florence University, where he graduates with a thesis about “Visual Arts in industrial civilization” and where he holds his first important exhibitions. In 1961 he arrives in Rome. For a few years he gives up exhibitions to test and define in full autonomy the thought and tools of his own research. In 1967 he starts exhibiting again, at last definitely convinced about the “ancient and inalienable” reasons of painting. From the mid Seventies Verna’s painting “is divided in-between top rigour and a deep emotional neglect”. Colour is the absolute protagonist of his painting, while the sign and the gesture have the task to organise space and to identify “figures” outside any merely descriptive reference. He organises more than one thousand personal exhibitions in Italy and abroad and takes part to Biennale di Venezia in 1970, 1978 and 1980. He is awarded several times: Acireale Award in 1968; Gallarate City Award in 1973 and 1995; Michetti Award in1973 and 1983, the Suzzara Award in1999. Retrospective exhibitions are organised by Gibellina Civic Museum in 1988, by Spoleto Municipal Gallery in 1994, by PAC Ferrara in 1997, by Conegliano Municipal Gallery, Palazzo Sarcinelli, in 1998, by Casa dei Carraresi Treviso in 2000, by National Museum Abruzzo, L’Aquila, in 2007 Mudima Foundation, Milan, in 2011. In 1976 he publishes an essay entitled Painting while in 1985, the Institute of Art History from Rome University collects in a book, entitled Fare pittura (About paiting), the texts of conversations held by Verna at the Fine Arts Academy and at the University. In 2008 Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei gives him the “Antonio Feltrinelli” Award for painting. He is appointed National Academic of Saint Luke. In 2010 the Reasoned Catalogue of his work was issued curated by Volker W. Feierabend and Marco Meneguzzo, for Silvana Editoriale, Cinisello Balsamo (MI). He lives and works in Rome.
Info:
Guarneri, Olivieri, Verna. The Seventies
Curated by Ivan Quaroni
Opening: Thursday February 25th 2016, 6.30 pm