MORTERONE.- To mark the centennial of François Morellet (Cholet, 1926 - 2016), the Amici di Morterone Cultural Association and the Morterone Museum of Contemporary Outdoor Art have joined the national project ∞François Morellet∞ Centenario in Italia 1926 – 2026, organized in close collaboration with the Morellet Estate and curated by Paolo Bolpagni, director of the Ragghianti Foundation in Lucca, and Alessandro Gallicchio, director of the Department of Art History at the French Academy in Rome - Villa Medici.
Various institutions across Italy have come together to pay tribute to the French artist in a country where he first exhibited in 1960 at the Galleria Azimut in Milan at the invitation of Piero Manzoni, and where his last exhibition, curated by him, was held at the A arte Invernizzi gallery in Milan in 2016, opening shortly after his passing.
On this occasion, on Saturday, July 11, 2026, at 11 a.m., the installation La porte s’envole, realized by François Morellet in 2012 and currently a permanent work at the museum at the open air, will be presented to the public once again. Two blue neon elements trace - while altering - the outline of one of the entrances to the house on which it is installed; the blue light shifts attention from the actual point of passage across the threshold to an “other” dimension, almost as if the viewer’s gaze were invited to move beyond the limits of what is real, toward the “possible,” without, however, negating the actual function of connecting the building’s exterior and interior.
Inside the Casa dell’Arte, a special focus on the artist is also presented, where works from the 1960s and 1970s - such as 5 impressions décalées du jaune à l’orange from 1969 and 8 passes de carrés réguliers, pivotées à chaque côté from 1970 - are exhibited in dialogue with works from the 2000s - Lunatique néonly 4 quarts n°11 from 2002 and Contorsions n°5 from 2007.
While in the earlier works the spatial activation is achieved through the fragmentation and staggered repetition of a geometric archetype such as the square, in his more recent works Morellet emphasizes his path of deconstructive freedom by involving the space outside the canvas in the symbolic recomposition of the circle in neon. In both cases, systematic rigor is combined with the unpredictability of chance through irony and the freedom of experimentation: the result of this artistic endeavor is a state of osmosis between the artwork, the viewer, and the space of interaction.
On this occasion, the other galleries of the Casa dell’Arte feature a new exhibition featuring works by artists who, since the mid-1980s, have helped revitalize and enliven the cultural life of Morterone, drawing on the poetic-philosophical vision of Carlo Invernizzi’s Natura Naturans - which places at the center of its reflections humanity and its capacity to perceive and feel what surrounds it not as something foreign, but as an integral part of the vital process of becoming - alongside works by artists who have been involved in the museum’s development over the decades.
