UGO LA PIETRA
THE ARTIST AND THE CITY
curated by Flaminio Gualdoni
Opening: thursday 16 march 2023
16 march – 15 may 2023
ABC-ARTE, Genoa
At 18:30 hours on Thursday 16 March ABC-ARTE will inaugurate in Genoa a large-scale exhibition, “The Artist and the City”, dedicated to the work of Ugo La Pietra.
The title sums up the intense relation that has connected and still connects the architect, designer and skilled painter La Pietra with the theme of the city.
Driven by interest and critical passion, La Pietra has for several decades developed his research on the relation between the individual and the surroundings. He has investigated this relation above all in the urban context, arguing for the demolition of the barrier between public and private space. He has done so using various forms of expression and an artistic practice motivated by the slogan ‘To inhabit is to be at home everywhere’.
The range of the exhibition extends from Recupero e reinvenzione, 1969, photographic collages with pen or pencil interventions inspired by Narrative Art and representing an organic dissection of the different ways in which city dwellers live in and appropriate the public space within the urban periphery of Milan.
After these analyses, the exhibition continues with other observations that gradually shift from the periphery to the centre of the city, with works like those in the series Il Monumentalismo, 1972.
In the course of time, the artist’s research takes the form of a series of painting able to narrate the ‘alternative routes’ (les chemins du dérive) within an urban structure that grows in an unregulated way (also described in his recent book La città senza morale, 2022) and which in the last few years have been conceived as ‘inventive’ variations within the concept of territoriality. Amid urban spaces and gardens, La Pietra creates a critically lucid and poetically intense route, as in La città scorre ai miei piedi (2011/2021), Itinerari preferenziali (2005/2022), Il giardino luogo di spettacolarità e concettualità (2018/2022).
The exhibition, accompanied by a new bilingual monograph with a rich documentary apparatus, published by ABC-ARTE edizioni, marks the start of the permanent collaboration between ABC-ARTE and Ugo La Pietra.
Artist biography
Born in Bussi sul Tirino (Pescara) in 1938, hailing from Arpino (Frosinone), the artist lives and works in Milan, where he graduated from the Politecnico in Architecture. An architect by training, artist, film maker, editor, musician, cartoonist and teacher, from 1960 he has defined himself as a researcher on the system of communication and the visual arts, operating simultaneously in the fields of art and projects. An untiring experimenter, he has passed through various movements (from Sign Painting to Conceptual Art, from Narrative Art to art cinema) and made us of many different media, conducting researches that have taken shape in the theory of the ‘Disbalanced System’ – an autonomous expression within Radical Design – and in important sociological themes such as “La casa telematica” (MoMA New York, 1972 – Fiera di Milano, 1983), “Rapporto tra Spazio reale e Spazio virtuale” (Triennale di Milano 1979, 1992), “La casa neoeclettica” (Abitare il tempo, 1990), “Cultura Balneare” (Centro Culturale Cattolica, 1985/95). He has disseminated his work through many exhibitions in Italy and abroad, and in various shows in the Triennale di Milano, Biennale di Venezia, Musée d’art contemporain in Lyon, Musée FRAC in Orléans, Museo delle Ceramiche in Faenza, Fondazione Ragghianti in Lucca, Fondazione Mudima in Milan, Museo MA*GA in Gallarate. He has always critically supported the humanist, significant and territorial component of art and the project with works and objects, as well as theoretical, didactic and editorial activity.
Public collections in Italy:
Triennale Design Museum, Milan; Museo della Permanente, Milan; Fondazione Cineteca Italiana, Milan; Museo del Novecento, Milan; Gallerie d’Italia - Collezione Intesa SanPaolo, Milan; Fondazione Ragghianti, Lucca; Fondazione Umberto Mastroianni, Arpino (FR); Fondazione Orestiadi, Gibellina (PA); MIC Museo Internazionale della Ceramica, Faenza (RA); Museo Hoffmann, Caltagirone (CT); Museo Fondazione Rocco Guglielmo, Catanzaro; Museo Palazzo Ducale, Tagliacozzo (AQ); Fondazione PLART, Naples; Museo MAAM Fondazione Aldo Morelato, Cerea (VR); MAGA Museo Arte Gallarate (VA); Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Reggio Calabria; MORE (Museum of Refused and Unrealized Art Projects), Museo Arte Contemporanea, Lissone.
International collections:
MoMA, Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY, USA); SF MoMA Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, CA, USA); Yale University (USA), Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library; Centre Pompidou, Paris; FRAC Centre, Orléans; Musée d'Art Moderne, Saint-Etienne; Neue Galerie, Graz; Museé Departemental, Gap; Nordico Stadtmuseum, Linz; Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.
Via XX Settembre 11/A, 16121, Genoa
T. 010.86.83.884
press@abc-arte.com
www.abc-arte.com
Ugo La Pietra. The artist and the city
16 March – 15 May 2023
Tue-Sat: 09:30-13:30 and 14:30-18:30 hrs
Sun-Mon: by appointment