Italian Art and the Modern at Robilant + Voena
Nicola McCartney, Wednesday, 29th September 2010
Robilant + Voena’s new exhibition of 20th-century Italian art, ‘The Gallant Apparel: Italian Art and the Modern’, is small but perfectly formed. With a careful selection of works, it charts the development of post-war modernism in Italy through to the present day. Special attention is given to Lucio Fontana, whose six important works underpin the spatialist concern of the other exhibiting artists, from Enrico Castellani to Ettore Spalletti.
Fontana’s iconic slash paintings are punctuated with emblematic works by Alighiero Boetti and Gino De Dominicis, whose Untitled, 1993 (see above), has a subtle blue face that looks down from the gallery’s mantlepiece, adding a touch of emotion to the show. In prize position is Giulio Paolini’s Di-stanza, 2000, an installation comprising a music stand with the score scattered across the floor. Appropriately, the work stands at the pit of the gallery as if conducting the rest of the exhibition.
An over-riding theme of ‘Italian Art and the Modern’ is the artist’s struggle to create his own recognisable identity within the chaos of post-war Italy. Between Boetti’s repeated postcards, Fontana’s slashes and Mario Merz’s 11-piece photography series, unseen since Documenta 5, 1972, Robilant + Voena successfully establish a coherent visual language amongst this generation of Italian art.
‘The Gallant Apparel: Italian Art and the Modern’ is on at Robilant + Voena until 27 October 2010 at 38 Dover St, London.
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