For over five decades, Mario Palli and Pope have sustained, with exceptional consistency and lucidity, artistic research directed towards privileging the recovery of technical ability and technique, where light, colour and surface appear as autonomous but always communicative linguistic elements of painting. Not similarities, but rather affinities: the exhibition starts from here and it is presented as an ideal itinerary through the processes and the expressive manners which have characterised the work of these two authors.
Ritmi per una sinopia, Azzurro sopra la sinopia, Sinopia annerita... the titles of these recent works by Mario Palli (1946), two of which are exhibited here for the first time, express the deep and enduring bond that links the artist - a native of the Venezua Giulia region - to the antique art of the fresco (the Italian titles translate to, respectively ‘Rhythms for a sinopia’, ‘Light blue over the sinopia’, and ‘Blackened sinopia’). The years of his Venetian education, where Palli mastered this difficult technique under the expert guidance of Bruno Saetti, are fundamental to understanding the genesis of an idea, of a suggestion that, through more than fifty years of experimentations, has led to the explanation of his current artistic style. The sinopite (the rough initial layer of plaster for the underdrawing of a fresco), as a matter of fact, is none other than the preparatory drawing that the fresco’s masters used as a sketch to follow for the completion of the final piece, irremediably destined to be lost under the colour applied ‘a fresco’ on the intonachino. Therefore, it is a transient and expendable image of the author’s intuitions, exempted from any conditioning, which also, because of its nature, is the most truthful and genuine expression of his inspiration. This is where Palli’s research begins, whose interest for what places itself “under” or “behind” the surface and his awareness of the importance of design in the additive process, have led towards the systematic exploration of painting as a “revealing” act. However, unlike the fresco, all the processes activated for the realisation of the final product are perfectly visible and recognisable to the observer in Palli’s works: from the preparatory drawing of the sinopite rigorously realised on a poplar wood panel (the “arriccio”), to the coarse raw linen canvas that covers it (intonachino), all the way up to the exterior of more or less thick glazes of colour. Then, from the bottom, broad chromatic traces emerge, becoming a single thing with the weave and the outline of the canvas: thus filtered, the blues, the blacks and the neutral tones can then embrace, in some cases, portions of dense and consistent colour which are furrowed by thin and oblique filaments marking their presence. These two expressive methods can be observed in the small diptych composed of Velo grigio più riga azzurra and Azzurro sopra la sinopia, both dating to 2019, in which it is possible to see how, in the first module, the trace of a dark grey colour just appearing from under the fabric of the canvas; while it is evident how, in the second one, the artist also intervened on the more superficial layer with a blue acrylic. The choice of a painting expanded into the forms of the diptych, triptych and polyptych can be ascribed to Palli’s formative years as well: just like the fresco’s masters imagined their works according to a preexisting structure, likewise, the artist feels the necessity of having a dialogue with the surrounding space through the realisation of modules that, starting from the same theme, can always offer different forms of balance and compositions. This is the case for the massive polyptych entitled Sinopia, velo bianco (2022), which consists of three rectangular panels of the same dimensions that, interspaced by stripes of variable height, create a composite play of assemblage of architectural solidity. Lastly, these “bands” can acquire their own physical autonomy as individual elements in the space, with a frame characterised by a consistent height, but with different widths, allowing a three-dimensional interpretation (Banda nera and Stanga nera, 2022).
Starting from the second half of the Sixties, the artistic research of Pope (Giuseppe Galli, b. 1942) is marked by the transition from informal painting, characterised by brush strokes loaded with material to which purely graphic signs were often paired, to diametrically opposite expressive solutions, defined by a logical organisation that is increasingly persuasive. The detailed studies conducted on the theory of form and on visual perception led the artist to the production of works with a strong geometric component, where the colour variations serve as a continuous incentive for the observer’s eye. However, it was from the beginning of the following decade that this research acquired full structure, delving into the theme of surface, of repetitiveness and of the study of the light/colour pairing.
The section of the exhibition dedicated to Pope focuses precisely on this fundamental phase of artistic experimentation. The artist’s research places itself in a timeframe - the Seventies - where the necessity for a reconsideration and recalibration of the expressive means and modalities of painting was becoming more and more urgent, also, and especially, because of the hard clash with the new media. Thus, the expansive series of works entitled Percorsi variabili - literally ‘variable paths - was born. In these artworks, the pictorial fabric is interested in the pervasive and systematic repetitions of chromatic stripes, tilted 45 degrees and 9 millimetres wide, that alternate two slightly different shades of the same colour, covering the entire surface of the painting. The dynamism of it, as a whole, even with the constant inclination’s degree, is given by the different lengths of each stripe, creating a subtle play of optical differences and balances, in the example of Vasarely. In the artwork entitled Percorso variabile didattico (1976), this “play” is further enhanced by the presence of a bi-chromatic module, without any bands, that the artist situates at the centre as a moment of “break” in the ideal reading of the whole, thus underlining the physical passage from one chromatic state to another. Furthermore, this work, developed as a triptych, highlights the importance assumed by the spatial component in Pope’s work: by multiplying the painted modules, often created in diptychs, triptychs and polyptychs, the artist communicates with the space, achieving articulated geometric-orthogonal arrangements, as in the case of Percorso variabile (viola a base blu) of 1974, composed of eleven elements.
The artwork Cancellando pittura, ritrovo pittura – Rich gold su percorso variabile, situated in the last room of the floor, ideally concludes the narrative about Percorsi variabili. This is a fundamental piece of work, whose interpretation is explained by its own title, which translates ‘Erasing painting, painting found - Rich gold on variable path’. In Pope’s own words: “...the second I nullified the work that I was doing (the Percorsi series), I was finding in this cancellation the opportunity of creating painting again.” The painting presents a uniform gold coloured veil that, like a byzantine patina, covers the entire surface of the picture, yet leaving a glimpse of the plot of the stripes and the traces of the “memory” of the underlying colour located along the perimeter.
The tracks of this “paint pushed along the sides” find themselves again in the only exhibited work that does not belong nor refers to the series Percorsi variabili: it is the painting entitled Nel rosso una singolare ferita (1988), an homage to the artwork L’origine du monde by Gustave Courbet. The surface, sculpted through thick brushstrokes of blue, green and yellow acrylic colour, creating tiny chromatic vibrations, is completely covered by a bright red paint (alluded to by the Italian title, meaning ‘In red, a singular wound’), nullifying it. In this case as well, the artist “cancels to find”, letting us perceive the vibrant presence of the underlying colour through small “wounds”.
Magalì Cappellaro
