Cortesi Gallery is pleased to announce its new exhibition in via Morigi 8, Milan opening on the 9th of February dedicated to Non-figurative Italian Art. It is entitled Evocare senza Rappresentare / Summoning without Representing.
The gallery has selected a range of artworks by some of the major artists of the 20th century such as Afro, Piero Dorazio, Giuseppe Santomaso and Emilio Vedova.
The project comes from comparing different aspects of the same artistic research that aims to non-figuration, investigating how these masters of painting have developed their unique interpretation of non-representational art.
Afro, Santomaso and Vedova are among the most significant promoters of radical artistic groups such as Fronte Nuovo delle Arti and Gruppo degli Otto. At the same time, Piero Dorazio is a pioneer figure of abstract painting always in dialog with the ZERO movement. These experiences draw the common idea of going beyond representational forms, overcoming the dichotomy between abstraction and figuration to embrace freedom and creative spontaneity.
Affected by the American artistic revolution, these Italian painters have taken a further step forward into the world of non-figuration, maintaining the primate of formal coherence that guides the pictorial composition and adding a deep personal expressive sensitivity.
Afro’s (1912 Udine – 1975 Zurich) painting is defined by unique freedom coming from the encounter between intentionality and gesture. He was interested in finding a way to express the impalpable and fleeting mutability of Venetian atmospheres. Starting from the traditional palette of the Venetian masters, he declined it in a different and personal way, like interwoven liquidity.
Dorazio (1927 Rome, Italy – 2005 Perugia, Italy) followed his artistic research, creating a poetic vision centred on a redefinition of painting technique, giving new meaning to light, colour, space and structure. In Dorazio’s systems, the mesh of colour is formed by numerous overlapping and intersecting lines that create a chromatic network vibrating with light and sensations. There is also a remarkable texture and materiality in his paintings.
Santomaso (Venice, 1907 – 1990) combined the Venetian painting tradition with the main international avant-garde movements, creating works that evoke and recall the concrete world while the subject and reality are exchanged.
Vedova (Venice, 1919 – 2006) is undoubtedly the figure who adopts the most extreme expressive choice, avoiding both defined image and form, seeking pure action and pure colour.
The exhibition highlights the different ways of expressing non-figuration by these masters of post-war Italian painting, paying particular attention to form, gesture and colour.
