First Swiss retrospective of Luigi Pericle kicks off in Lugano

The Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana(MASI) in Lugano presents from April 18 to September 5, 2021 the first Swiss retrospective of the painter and draughtsman Luigi Pericle (Basel, 1916 - Ascona, 2001), entitled Luigi Pericle. Ad astra. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the artist’s death, the exhibition project curated by Carole Haensler in collaboration with Laura Pomari aims to retrace his artistic and spiritual research activity through a selection of paintings, drawings, sketches, documents and writings. The exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Luigi Pericle Archive and the Villa dei Cedri Museum in Bellinzona.

Born in Basel on June 22, 1916 under the name Pericle Luigi Giovannetti, the artist approached painting from a young age, attending an art school, which he soon abandoned, however, in disagreement with the teaching methods. Already in his younger years he became interested in ancient philosophy and religions of the Far East, becoming over time a connoisseur of Zen Buddhism, the spiritual world of ancient Egypt and theosophy. After achieving fame as a painter, Pericles moved to Ascona with his wife: here he worked mainly in solitude, devoting various studies to the genius loci: the legacy of the spiritual traditions of Monte Verità. The artistic heritage of Luigi Pericle, saved from oblivion thanks to chance, is currently the focus of a project of research, restoration, conservation and cataloguing, managed by the non-profit association “Archivio Luigi Pericle” of Ascona.

The exhibition at Palazzo Reali is divided into five sections. It thus traces the work of an artist who studies the past but is strictly contemporary in his painting, and in his vocabulary proves equal to the lyrical abstraction of the second École de Paris and informal art. There are many suggestions from artists, such as Jean Dubuffet, Henri Michaux, Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Julius Bissier and others, which are balanced in a highly individual artistic synthesis; the ink drawings in particular reach a virtuosic level of meditative depth. The exhibition also documents the spiritual context of Louis Pericles’ art, his studies of calligraphy, astrology, theosophy, Zen philosophy, as well as the universal canon of art history.

His careful analyses are found embodied in the paintings and India ink on display and lead back to reflections on becoming and the passage of time, form and metamorphosis, materiality and spirituality.

The catalog edited by Carole Haensler, Director of Bellinzona Musei and curator of the Villa dei Cedri Museum, includes an introduction by Tobia Bezzola, Director of MASI, and essays by Andrea and Greta Biasca-Caroni, President and Director of the Luigi Pericles Archive, Michele Tavola, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, and Andreas Kilcher, ETH Zürich, President of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE).

For info: www.masilugano.ch

Image: Luigi Pericle, Untitled (Matri Dei d.d.d.) (1966; mixed media on masonite; Biasca-Caroni Collection) Ph.Credit Marco Beck Peccoz

First Swiss retrospective of Luigi Pericle kicks off in Lugano

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