At GAM in Turin, Italy's first retrospective dedicated to abstract painter Mary Heilmann

The Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea of Turin is hosting the first Italian retrospective dedicated to American artist Mary Heilmann (San Francisco, 1940) from October 30, 2024 to March 16, 2025. The exhibition, curated by Chiara Bertola, director of GAM, was created in collaboration with the artist and New York-based Studio Heilmann.

Considered one of the most important contemporary abstract painters, the exhibition traces sixty years of her career, from her early geometric works of the 1970s to her recent canvases shaped by fluorescent colors. The sixty works on display traverse her vibrant output with the intention of offering a broad look at her playful approach to abstraction and presenting the major themes and steps in her artistic research.

Born in California, Heilmann initially studied poetry, ceramics and sculpture before moving to New York in 1968, where she devoted herself to painting, standing out in a context dominated by sculptors. This exhibition explores her formal approach to painting and abstraction, highlighting the autobiographical themes that run through her work. Heilmann’s work combines the geometries of minimalism with the spontaneity of the Beat Generation, characterized by an often unorthodox and explosive use of color and form. His art is influenced by the 1970s counterculture, the free speech movement, and the surf spirit of California, anticipating beat culture and subsequent protest movements.

Heilmann’s simple forms are made more dynamic through various devices: outlines are deliberately undefined to add freshness and spontaneity to his work. In some works, the forms seem to melt like liquid wax, creating a hypnotic visual effect. Heilmann uses color freely and intuitively, with splashes and edges that blur without following rigid patterns, a defining characteristic of his style. This casual approach to painting technique conceals a structural complexity that gradually reveals itself. The brushstrokes are always evident and give a sense of immediacy and physical presence of the artistic gesture. Mary Heilmann’s works demonstrate how apparent simplicity can conceal unexpected depth and complexity, inviting the audience to a careful and thoughtful exploration.

Each room in the exhibition is designed to evoke the emotion and chromatic “sound” of a specific period, reflecting the artist’s thinking, “Each of my paintings can be seen as an autobiographical marker, a cue, with which I evoke a moment in my past or my projected future.”

The exhibition includes the artist’s early paintings dating back to the 1970s, including shapes such as squares and grids; works inspired mainly by architectural details of the interiors of studios and friends’ homes. The most historic painting in the exhibition is 1976’s Chinatown, which takes its title from the neighborhood where Heilmann lived his early years in New York. The influence of modern masters such as Piet Mondrian is evident, for example, in works such as French Screen (1978), The Rosetta Stone I (1978) and Robert’s Garden (1983). The exhibition also presents works from the late 1980s to the present, many of which are inspired by key moments in the artist’s life, bringing out his love of popular culture, music and film that have always influenced and animated Heilmann’s painting. The exhibition will also feature more recent works with landscapes composed of endless highway lines lost in the night that evoke road trips, road movies and video games, such as Driving at Night (2016), up to the latest paintings of only oceanic landscapes lined with waves, with vivid greens and deep blues that repeat like a mantra mindful of the surfing spirit practiced in California, as in Pal Al (2011) or Tube at Dusk (2022). There will also be some armchairs designed by the artist, a new edition made especially for GAM.

This first Italian solo exhibition of Heilmann’s work is intended to underscore the proactive and research role that the Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino aims to put back at the center. GAM is committed to enhancing the research of those artists whose work-which has become “timeless”-continues to inspire and stimulate new generations of artists and the most curious public. Works that have never arrived in Italy and whose greatness has not been fully appreciated until now; works that have escaped understanding and whose intelligence has not been grasped, thus remaining “timeless” and “out of time.” Such is the case with Mary Heilmann’s research, whose power and joyfulness have not been sufficiently experienced live.

As stated from the beginning of the new direction, First Resonance intends to make its fulcrums vibrate with each other: the collections, exhibitions and events. Today, this is manifested through three exhibitions, the opening of the second floor, the inauguration of the “Living Repository,” and the refitting of the historical collections. Collections, exhibitions and projects must influence and reinforce each other within an organic design of the Museum’s entire activity.

Mary Heilmann’s exhibition at GAM opens in conjunction with Art Week and Artissima 2024. The opening will be held on October 29, 2024, with opening to the public from October 30, 2024 to March 16, 2025.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog that includes essays by Chiara Bertola, Barry Schwabsky and Davide Ferri, a historical text by Mary Heilmann and updated bio-bibliographical apparatus. The illustrated part of the catalog includes images of all the works on display in the exhibition, some shots of the installation, and some images taken in the Heilmann Studio.

Hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Mondays.

Pictured is installation of the Mary Heilmann exhibition at GAM in Turin. Ph. Perottino

At GAM in Turin, Italy's first retrospective dedicated to abstract painter Mary Heilmann

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