MIART 2021

Dialogue on the concept of the Absolute

ABC-ARTE presents the recent gallery programme with a high-quality synthesis of works by the artists Giorgio Griffa, Tomas Rajlich and Nanni Valentini.

The affinity between these three major artists lies in the very conception of the Absolute.

After a primarily linguistic early period, Rajlich turned to finding a fundamental reason in  painting. Valentini too (whose Garze [Gauzes] from 1976 are also a painterly start of reasoning on light) sought to go beyond the strictly formal questions of sculpture to inquire into its ultimate substance, a plastic absolute that recognises its own foundations. And Griffa’s differentiated and modulated repetitions are very close to the conditioned reflex and practical habitude whose roots lie in the very physiology of painting.

The solo exhibition by Giorgio Griffa Esonerare il mondo [To relieve the world] in 2015 marked the beginning of the gallery’s collaboration with this artist from Turin. The association was consolidated with the most recent solo exhibition Un mondo astratto non basta [An abstract world is not enough] in 2021. On this occasion the ABC-ARTE gallery produced a catalogue with an appraisal by Alberto Fiz and an interesting interview between Giorgio Griffa and the philosopher Leonardo Caffo.

The association of ABC-ARTE with Tomas Rajlich goes back to his first solo exhibition in the gallery Fifty years of Painting, followed by the joint exhibition Absolute Painting | Giorgio Griffa, Tomas Rajlich, Jerry Zeniuk, and the solo exhibition dedicated entirely to his Black Paintings 1976-79. In 2021 ABC-ARTE has been the main sponsor of the exhibition held in the Museo di Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce in Genoa entitled MAKE IT NEW!. In this project Rajlich’s works are shown in dialogue with some key works of Italian abstract art selected by the artist himself, from an introduction to the concretism of the 1930s to the postwar period, from the preconceptual and perceptual explorations of the 1960s to Op Art and the new painting of the 1970s and 1980s, unravelling a novel and original line in Italian abstract art.

ABC-ARTE’s presentation of the work of Nanni Valentini (1932-1985) began with the large-scale exhibition in 2019 curated by Flaminio Gualdoni and entitled L'interspazio tra il visibile ed il tattile [The space between the visible and the tactile]. The project continues with an important volume entirely dedicated to Valentini’s Trasparenze [Transparencies] from 1976 with an essay by Flaminio Gualdoni and texts by the artist, to be published by Silvana Editoriale.