Courtesy Gallery
On the eve of the opening of the 57th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, the Cortesi Gallery has opened a new space in Milan with an exhibition dedicated to Nicola De Maria. The exhibition brings together the five monumental canvases created by De Maria on the occasion of his participation in the Venice Biennale in 1990, and is intended as a tribute to this important institution and to the artists who have participated in it over the years. At the same time, Cortesi presents Serena Maisto's first solo show in the gallery in Lugano.
This is the third gallery by Stefano Cortesi who, with his sons Andrea and Lorenzo, opened his first office in Lugano in 2013, and, subsequently, one in London in 2015. "The decision to open in Milan - say Andrea and Lorenzo Cortesi - responds to the need to meet Italian collectors and intercept the international public increasingly present in the city thanks to the rapid growth of museums and private foundations, and the wide range of events. It also marks an important return and homage to our Milanese origins. The new space of 350 square meters will offer new exhibition possibilities compared to the past ».
From the first exhibition in the Ticino spaces, Arte italiana '60 -'90, a project that included works by Modern Masters such as Agostino Bonalumi, Enrico Castellani and Lucio Fontana, the research of the Gallery has always involved experts, curators and Italian and international cultural institutions, including including the Zero Foundation, the Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art, the Paolo Scheggi Archive, the Agostino Bonalumi Archive, the Lercaro Collection in Bologna and many others. The merit of Cortesi, among others, is that of having presented for the first time on British territory the first solo exhibitions of Grazia Varisco, Gianfranco Pardi and the Croatian Ivan Picelj.
«I have decided to transform my passion for art into an activity - declares Stefano Cortesi - and I think I can say that we have managed to leave a good mark for research, the quality of exhibitions and participation in fairs. We focused on the most historicized part of the post-war period, that of the 50s and 60s, a period of great innovation in art. In recent years this sector has registered great market interest, allowing us both to propose already well-known authors, and to do research around other artists - I am thinking for example of Paolo Scheggi - helping to strengthen their international recognition. We have achieved visibility very quickly and now, after opening in London and consolidating our presence on the European scene, we have decided to move to Milan, and to do so we have chosen to add another piece to our exhibition proposal. After focusing on artists who have carried out a research devoted to the rigor of optics, kinetics and geometry, we have now thought of turning our attention to painting and color. In recent years, we have seen a decline in attention to Transavantgarde artists from the market and from some dealers who had followed and promoted them in the XNUMXs and XNUMXs. We strongly believe in the quality of their work and we want to give our contribution to give adequate visibility to the artists of this movement ».
Nicola De Maria is one of the protagonists of the Italian Transavantgarde, a movement theorized by Achille Bonito Oliva in the mid-seventies which, downsizing the experimental optimism of the avant-gardes, emerged as a transitional art, a movement of cultural nomadism, a stylistic eclecticism , a recovery of painting and styles, abstract and figurative, condensed into the same work in complete freedom. In 1990 Nicola De Maria, invited for the third time to exhibit at the Venice Biennale, was in the Italian Pavilion together with Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Dadamaino, Gino De Dominicis, Alberto Garutti, Giuseppe Maraniello, Carlo Maria Mariani, Vettor Pisani and others . The curators, Laura Cherubini, Flaminio Gualdoni and Lea Vergine, assigned an entire room to each artist. In the room dedicated to him, Nicola De Maria creates an immersive intervention: large fields of color submerge the walls of his room with yellow, red, blue, orange, purple, green, on which the artist installs the five large canvases on display at the Cortesi Gallery in Milan. With their three meters in height each, and lengths that even exceed five, the Orphic Heads (as the artist entitles them, numbering them from I to V) recall at the same time imprecise geometric shapes, natural landscapes and imaginative starry skies , but also the visual suggestions of a musical score. With their chromatic 'violence', these works involve and envelop the viewer in an infinite space of color, experiencing a particular light that they seem to emit rather than receive from the outside. effect obtained by the artist with the use of natural pigments in a return to the primitive techniques of painting. As it was for the Venice Biennale first, and then for the exhibition at the Pecci Museum, when the works were re-presented in 2012, also in the Milanese exhibition the five large canvases will be accompanied by a series of historical works of smaller dimensions that will complete the enveloping experience of 'constellation' desired by the artist.
In Lugano Cortesi dedicated a solo show to the Swiss artist Serena Maisto. Active for over a decade, during which it developed its own style and its own track, drawing inspiration from Jackson Pollock's action painting, da Cortesi presents a new project born from the encounter with the work of Edo Bertoglio, Swiss photographer and director who portrayed the uniqueness and energy of 80s New York. Maisto 'appropriates' the shots, transforming them into paintings, in which the outlines have been highlighted, almost framed. The photographer's eye creates a time line, a temporal portal between past and present that allows Maisto to almost communicate with Basquiat, inviting the viewer to do the same.
Courtesy Gallery
Corso di Porta Nuova 46 / B - 20121 Milan
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Opening hours: Monday-Friday: 10.30-19.00; Saturday: 12.00-18.00
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