An exhibition on Guy Harloff in Milan, with forty works and a focus on his relationship with jazz

At the Milan Cultural Center, from Nov. 6 to Dec. 5, 2019, the exhibition Guy Harloff (1933/1991) Alchemy and Synesthesia opens, recounting through about 40 works by Guy Harloff the artistic journey of this renowned painter-philosopher between the 1960s and 1980s.

Enriching the exhibition are unpublished photographs by Roberto Masotti, rare books and catalogs, jazz record covers designed by Harloff and pictorial “reinterpretations” of Harloff’s work by contemporary artist Linda Orbac. The exhibition, curated by Serena Redaelli - Guy Harloff Archive, is entirely dedicated to the painter Guy Harloff (Paris, 1933 - Galliate, 1991), and comes after recent exhibitions in Milan (2016 Galleria San Barnaba; 2018 Galleria Anna Maria Consadori) that brought to light the complex personality of Guy Harloff, an artist-philosopher of renown in the 1970s and 1980s, honored at the time by a monographic exhibition at the Permanente in Milan in 1974, by solo shows at the Cavallino galleries in Venice, del Naviglio, Schwarz, Cortina and Carini in Milan, and by appearances at the Documenta in Kassel (1972) and at the X Quadriennale in Rome (1977).

The exhibition is organized under the Patronage of the Municipality of Milan, the European Commission and the Lombardy Region, and offers a selection of works made from the second half of the 1950s to the end of the 1980s, put in dialogue with the most stimulating cultural and artistic themes cultivated by the author.

The stateless soul, the breadth of interests, the uninterrupted movements between Paris, New York, Milan, Morocco,Iran, led Harloff to study the world of jazz (he was on friendly terms with Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus), cinema (collaborations with Vittorio De Sica and Arsenije Jovanović), philosophy (devotee of alchemy, Tantra, Sufism and Jewish Kabbalah), literature and art criticism (friendship with Giovanni Arpino, Alain Jouffroy, Henry Miller, Franco Russoli, Harald Szeemann, Michel Tapié, Patrick Waldberg, etc.), of great collecting and international art exponents (frequentation of Peggy Guggenheim, Phillip Martin, Alberto Giacometti, Francis Bacon, etc.).

Having joined the Beat generation(Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlowsky, Gregory Corso, and William Borroughs) in the latter 1950s, he devoted himself from that time to painting, executing collages and colored pencils that followed a’symbolic inspiration of a modern miniaturist, according to surreal-symbolist and neo-Dada hybridization with Jewish, Oriental and Arabic allegory, all updated in the trace of the personal neo-Baroque accumulation of signs.

Today’s exhibition presents in some forty works the evolution of his complex and unmistakable poetics, scaled up over a thirty-year period of favorite subjects: mandalas, letters of the alphabet, vessels of the Great Journey, books of knowledge, large and complex Persian carpets, the heart, the tree of life, the alchemical Voie Royale, works accompanied by locutions, inscriptions, titling, dating and mottos intended to reinforce knowledge.

Accompanying the paintings are Roberto Masotti’s photographs, important finds from theLelli and Masotti Archive (Milan), depicting the artist on his galleon in Chioggia and at the opening of the monographic exhibition at the Permanente in Milan (1974) inaugurated by the band of his friend Ornette Coleman.

Other new works on display: jazz record covers designed by Harloff, documentary photos, rare or unobtainable books and catalogs, a precious specimen of Caucasian carpet (courtesy Mirco Cattai FineArt&AntiqueRugs, Milan), an element of comparison with the Tapis harloffiani, as well as a series of pictorial “rereadings” of Harloff’s work by the very young artist Linda Caracciolo Borra (Linda Orbac), granddaughter of the painter Pompeo Borra, are on display.

The exhibition will include the screening of two short films made by Harloff, a passionate cinephile, findings hitherto unpublished and conceived by the author as a complement to his work. Accompanying the exhibition is a catalog published by Graphic & Digital Project srl, which brings together unpublished accounts and curiosities about the artist’s life and production. The event is included in the context of BOOKCITY MILANO 2019 and is placed in dialogue with initiatives related to concurrent musical events.

For all information you can visit the official website of the Milan Cultural Center.

Pictured: Guy Harloff, Je voudrais voir mon coeur... (drawings after heart attack) (1975; collage and inks on paper, 21 x 22 cm; Private collection).

An exhibition on Guy Harloff in Milan, with forty works and a focus on his relationship with jazz

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