The Search for the Absolute

Paintings, pictorial objects

Rodolfo Aricò is one of the most noteworthy exponents of Italian art in the second half of the 20th century - and as such, more than anything else, one of the outstanding protagonists of the painterly concept known as essential or analytical painting.

Born in 1930 in Milan, Aricò, who died in 2002, used monochrome colors and the entire space available to him, producing pictorial objects that fill the room, creating ever-changing and exciting variants on ostensible perspectives. Whereas his early oeuvre was deeply influenced by the art informel prevalent in Italy in the 1950s and early 1960s, Aricò later achieved a greater formal composition which led him to realize his first truly "painterly objects" and to produce sculpture-like elements, which he presented in atmospheric installations. From this point onward, he concentrated more and more intensely on the fundamental principles of the sculptural, on the values of color, on the material quality of painting, on textures, structures and on the sublime treatment of coloristic layers and surfaces. The most unmistakable trait of Aricò's oeuvre is the fact that by managing to evoke a sense of depth in his two-dimensional surfaces, he succeeds in escaping Constructivism. In other words, he moves from the surface into the surrounding space, and the pictorial medium becomes a freely navigating object, an entity that despite being a surface attains a spiritual level and floats as if in its own cosmos. In his work, Aricò always investigates the boundary between object and picture, the borderline, the point where an object becomes a picture. He establishes a mysterious connection between space, lines, surfaces and color and in so doing always endeavors to create a symbol that embraces both picture and object. The shapes are thus always created during the production of the artwork and are not a result intended beforehand.The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue that shows the fascinating breadth of all phases and design-related aspects of Rodolfo Aricò's oeuvre.

Edited by Dr. Klaus Wolbert of Institut Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt, the catalogue contains essay by renowed scholars such as Dr. Klaus Wolbert, Institut Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt; Prof. Luca Massimo Barbero, The Guggenheim Foundation, Venice; Prof. Claudio Cerritelli, Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan; Prof. Massimo Donà, Università "Vita-Salute" San Raffaele, Milan and Carlo Invernizzi, poet, Milan. The 208 pages bilingual catalogue contains 80 colour and 30 black and white full page images and bio-bibliographical notes.