First major retrospective for Paolo Manazza, abstract artist, journalist and entrepreneur

First major retrospective exhibition for Paolo Manazza (Milan, 1959), artist, writer, journalist, publisher and entrepreneur: held from July 5 to 17, 2023 at the spaces of the Parisian art gallery and auction house ARP - Art Research Paris, it is titled La forma dei colori (The Shape of Colors ) and is presented by art critic Marco Meneguzzo and Robert Phillips, former consultant for MoMA New York on emerging talents. The exhibition, which takes place at the venue in rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Matignon district, presents a body of thirty works created by the Milanese artist from 2004 until today.

The Shape of Colors covers almost two decades of Paolo Manazza’s production of work, and fully traces the pictorial-chromatic symphony of the artist, one of the main exponents of contemporary Italian abstract art, so much so that he is mentioned in the volume The Informal Italian way. From Afro, Vedova, Burri to the Latest Trends published by Mondadori in 2013. The works in the exhibition emanate, right from their titles, an intense chromatic protagonism: in addition to The Shape of colors (2004), which gives the title to the retrospective, works from a few years ago, chromatic compositions such as Untitled Brown (2004) and Pink Clouds (2008), are exhibited alongside more recent works such as Red Explosion (2020), Yellow Pink (2022), Untitled Magenta (2023), Untitled Green (2023), Untitled red (2023), Untitled blue (2023) and the color mosaic entitled Palette! More than Hundred Colours (2020).

The exhibition is meant to explicitrea a balanced synergy, saturated with multiple sensations and emotions, captured by journalist Danilo Taino, who describes his visit to Manazza’s studio on Via Dezza in Milan this way: “I was visiting my friend, that somewhat rainy day. I had not entered the atelier with the intention of buying. I couldn’t help myself, in front of the painting that now stands on a wall in my house. Nothing strange: it has happened to many. And many more, in front of a painting by Paolo, will feel the same emotion as me. In Italy as in Paris.” The exhibition is also meant to represent a heartfelt act of love to France and Paris, the historic capital of art and an indispensable crossroads for artists from every corner of the world. Set up between two streets dedicated to Paul Cézanne and Paul Baudry, the Paris exhibition is also meant to be a tribute to the French painting tradition. Among the works on display, in fact, we find Study about Pierre Bonnard (2009), Hommage to Monet (2011) and Et voilà les premiers citoyen-consommateurs, À gauche l’esprit renaissant (2023), a brightly colored reinterpretation of Édouard Manet’s famous Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe.

“Paris is the right place for Paolo Manazza’s painting,” explains art critic Marco Meneguzzo in his catalog essay, “I realized this upon entering his studio, and seeing a large vertical, abstract, chromatically sunny work, with ”àplat“ but still textural drafts, still with the memory of the brushstroke that thickens the color the moment it leaves contact with the surface. A happy and nostalgic painting together, as are, for example, the paintings of Pierre Bonnard and, above all, Nicolas De Staël.”

A journalist specializing in art economics, a 30-year contributor to Corriere della Sera and founder of ArtsLife, Paolo Manazza’s life path has always “led him back toward art,” as critic Alan Jones has effectively noted. For a number of years, he taught “Art Publishing” and “Theory and Practice of the Multimedia Art Market” at the Brera Academy in Milan and in postgraduate master’s programs. In September 2005 he received the honor of “Officer of Merit of the Italian Republic” from Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. After a long period of silent painting, in 2008 Manazza inaugurated his first solo exhibition at Fondazione Maimeri, Italy’s largest artist’s paint company, with an ironic and provocative title: ViceVersa: a critic’s paintings presented by artists. Since then, he has exhibited on several occasions, both in Italy and abroad: in Milan, Rome, Florence, Naples, Venice, Brescia, Sestri Levante, Arzachena, Vigevano, Arcore, Beausoleil (France), Lugano (Switzerland), Monaco (Monte Carlo), Taichung (Taiwan, China), Miami and Palm Beach (USA), Eumsong (South Korea) and Sharm el-Sheikh (Egypt). As a painter, he belongs to that generation of artists who still attempt to explore the infinite possibilities of painting, questioning the meaning and power of color versus the concept of form. Manazza is also a scholar of ancient painting and the informal outcomes of the New York and European school of the 1950s, and today he experiments with chromatic superimpositions in a neoinformal painting that combines the force of gesture with the vibrations of color.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by ARP, with texts by Mimmo Di Marzio, Alan Jones, Matilde Nuzzo, Stefania Salvatore and Danilo Taino.

Image: Paolo Manazza, The Gardens on the Sea, 2008-2016.

First major retrospective for Paolo Manazza, abstract artist, journalist and entrepreneur

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