Milan, an exhibition dedicated to Umberto Mariani at the Gallerie d'Italia

The Gallerie d’Italia in Milan, hosts, at the Sala delle Colonne, the exhibition Umberto Mariani. Fragments from Bisazio. Act III, from January 22 to March 1, 2020. The exhibition compares fourteen works by Umberto Mariani (Milan, 1936) with a nucleus of five works between the 17th and 18th centuries selected from Intesa Sanpaolo’s collection of Russian icons. Mariani has long wanted to highlight the connection that the essential features of his work weave with themes and moments in art history.

The fold is the insistent form that characterizes, in the series The Concealed Form (pictured), the working of lead sheets then subjected to intense and absolute coloring. Precious in its optical and tactile value, it is not only surface, but becomes image, accomplished form, “icon.” Even in his earlier works it surfaced, as a painted motif covering and veiling the letters of an alphabet devoid of communicating texture and therefore “aphonic.”

The saints and figures of biblical history in the Eastern tradition in their iconographic characterization are defined by their drapery and color components. Such elements allude to a condition in which geometric forms of a metaphysical character complement the mystical representations leading to a form of space-time abstraction.

The encounter that occurs starts from seemingly formal and almost secondary motives. It nevertheless serves to demonstrate how the aspiration of an artist like Mariani (who took his steps from the pop imagery of the 1960s to arrive at a painting that qualifies as an erasure of signifying value, without ever denying the force of representation) is aimed at theaffirmation of pictorial and symbolic values that transcend matter, illusion and visual deception, to be revelation of the unspeakable, the ineffable, the unknown that hides behind the folds of reality.

For all information about the exhibition you can visit the official website of the Gallerie d’Italia.

Milan, an exhibition dedicated to Umberto Mariani at the Gallerie d'Italia

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