MILAN.- The A arte Invernizzi and Artra galleries in Milan will open a solo exhibition of Pino Pinelli’s work on Tuesday 21 May 2024.

From the beginning of the 1970s, Pino Pinelli redefined the concept of pictorial space, bringing the colour of his monochrome canvases to overflow from the limits of the painting. This overflowing reaches extreme results in the middle of the decade when his works, created with painted material in which the arrangement of colours becomes body, physical and real presence become autonomous figures immersed in space. His work has always been conceived as a pictorial body, as an organism that occupies space thanks to the action of the gesture that builds its trajectories, concentrations and dilations, which contribute to the creation of a unified vision. As Pinelli himself states in the interview with Tommaso Trini “in each of my works it is as if I had fragmented the monochrome and disseminated it in space. The ‘frammentità’ [fragments] are entities that always arrange themselves autonomously in space according to this throwing gesture. In this way, I wanted to renew not painting as a genre, but my personal grammar of ‘painting-making’”. The material enhances the tactility of the chromatic value, which gives presence to the forms and leads to an involvement of the viewer in the here and now of the visual experience.

The exhibition is conceived as a single itinerary through the two Milanese galleries, where the artist has been the protagonist - over the years - of numerous solo and group exhibitions: starting in the late 1970s at the Artra gallery and continuing in the 1990s and 2000s at A arte Invernizzi.

At A arte Invernizzi, the exhibition is articulated on the two floors of the gallery, proposing large works, created between the late 1980s and early 1990s, which immediately manifest themselves as true tactile presences, thanks to the chromatic accords that create vibrant surfaces. The works are representative of Pinelli’s reflection on “dissemination”, in which the forms are no longer circumscribed within the limits of the frame but are free to dispose themselves on the wall, conceived as an active element in the realisation of the work. The upper floor of the gallery exhibits works belonging to the “Pitture” cycle, in which we witness a spatial and perceptive investigation, where each individual fragment contributes to creating the outline of the work. The work Pittura B/G (1991), in which round shapes of different sizes stand out superimposed on the surface of the wall in a circular rhythm, also emphasised by the alternation of the colours yellow and white, dialogues with Pittura N/G, also made up of circular figures that intersect, accentuating the work’s dynamism. The second room on the upper floor is instead entirely dedicated to works from the 1970s, such as Pittura GR. (1973), Pittura B. R. B. (1975) and Pittura Rossa (1973), the latter work to which Tommaso Trini refers, in the interview in the catalogue, when he speaks of a “visionary work, like a red square suddenly waving in the sparse Martian atmosphere, a red square that the painter unfurls as if it were the cloth of a flag, whose virtual waving suggests air and life”. The lower floor houses four large disseminations from the late 1980s, such as two large works in which Pinelli exalts more the “skin” of painting, highlighting seeds and roots of its infinite making, and the artwork Pittura GR/G (1992).

Galleria Artra held the artist’s first pesonal exhibition in 1979, showing works from the mid-1970s such as Pittura GR (1977) and some works from the “Pittura” cycle of 1976, which will be presented again on this exhibiting occasion. These are some of the works with which Pinelli began his reflection on the work as a pictorial body, released from the limits of the painting and free to expand and occupy space. In particular with Pittura GR (1977) the elements that make up the work suggest the perimeter of a square, broken and fragmented, whose sides open up and extend onto the wall.

With Pittura B (1977) and Pittura GR (1978) there is a progression of several elements, which are arranged following an arched trajectory, creating tensions and leaps in contrast to the fixity of the wall and new balances in continuous movement. These works are part of the research on dissemination that the artist continued in the following decades and that finds its most complete outcome in the installation Pittura G. VR. VL. AR. (1982) where 12 elements played on the alternation of primary and complementary colours are freely arranged on the wall surface. Alongside these works, the work Pittura (1977) will also be displayed, as well as various other installations presented in solo exhibitions at the gallery in 1982 and 1985.

The two exhibitions constitute a new opportunity to rediscover one of the most intense and productive periods of Pinelli’s activity, which constantly reinvented his language by seeking an active and continuous dialogue between work, space and spectator.

On the occasion of the exhibitions, a bilingual catalogue will be published with an interview with Pino Pinelli by Tommaso Trini edited by Daniela Domina, a text by Carlo Invernizzi, reproductions of the works on display, and an updated bio-bibliographic section.

A special thanks to Archivio Pino Pinelli.