| PIERO DORAZIO | you can also see the exhibition and the works on ARTSY | |
| paintings 1962-1967 | ||
| 24 july – 18 september 2020 |
“Today, what counts is “making”. Making clarity and quality, to seek the sense of reality of the action of painting itself: in the combination of colour, in the choice of original matter, in the metaphorical construction of a structure. Making from the inside and beyond. We cannot represent the world and therefore space to ourselves except in the form of active or potential energies, constantly ready in time. So, no more dragons or compositions of shapes, surfaces, saints or moons, but continuing operational research for a type of representation of space never seen nor sensed before. A space excited by contiguous and continuous energies, inside which our operations take on further meaning.” Piero Dorazio, Piero Dorazio Antologica 1947-1970, Gallerie d’Arte Martano, Torino 1970. p. 10. | ||
Piero Dorazio and Lionello Venturi in the artist's room at the Venice Biennial, 1960, photo Virginia Dortch Dorazio. Courtesy Archivio Piero Dorazio, Milano © Piero Dorazio by SIAE 2020. |
“Careful examination of the bright textures period brings to light a remarkable intellectual effort on the part of Piero Dorazio to renew his pictoral vision. He reduces and unifies the rules of the composition: “The structure that others call ‘web’ [reticolo] is in reality a superimposition of parameters: vertical is the force of gravity; horizontal the line of the horizon; and diagonal the indication of our route. They are the three directions of our existence.” By setting out the surface in these three directions, Dorazio would create more complex relations between the surface of the medium, the pictoral space and the painted image. As he developed and expressed this approach in a more evident way, he gradually arrived at the colour stripe period of 1963-1968 when the pictures were organized on the basis of a combination of horizontal, vertical and diagonal rhythms.” Nathalie Vernizzi, Razionalismo lirico, p.320, Vanni Scheiwiller, Milano 1994 | ||
Piero Dorazio in his studio, 1965, photo Vincenzo Pirozzi. |
“At the start of the period, the artist drew free-hand stripes, the width of the paintbrush, with no room for pentimenti. The colour is absorbed unevenly by the medium and Dorazio exploits the blurs of the versatile pictoral matter. The further he goes with his research, the more he adopts a sober language, simplifying the elements that make up the image. He gets rid of midtones. He contrasts the harmonies of shaded chromatism with pure colour. The sensations of brightness due to the fluidity of the pigment progressively disappear in favour of the power of chromatism, to the point that all the colours lose their transparency, and so the eye is offered the resistance of a hard surface.” Nathalie Vernizzi, Razionalismo lirico, p.320, Vanni Scheiwiller, Milano 1994 | ||
Piero Dorazio in his studio, 1975, photo Nino Lo Duca. |
“Dorazio left the margins of his paintings unclosed so as to allow the times and the modes of his action on the canvas to be described there. One understands how that thick web of stratifications was born, tending now towards a monochrome with the emphasis on one dominant colour and the use of superimposed, still wet and mingling coats of paint, now to build itself into a fabric of regular beehives whose luminosity lets obscure backgrounds shine through, or viceversa. The play of rhythmic images introduces a series of free-regulated combinations the purpose of which seems to be to make the color-light compose an idea of arranged, vibrant space. Frayed margins, white lines that seem to be unthreaded from the painted fabric allow the complex processes of its making to be clearly read.” Marisa Volpi Orlandini, Dorazio, p. 9, Alfieri Venezia 1977 | ||
Piero Dorazio and Giuseppe Ungaretti, San Gallo, 1966, photo Galerie im Erker. |
AVAILABLE WORKS
Piero Dorazio. Paintings 1962-1967 was last modified: July 24th, 2020 by