Gastone Novelli. Mostra antologica

curated by Flaminio Gualdoni and Walter Guadagnini
March 9 - May 10 2006
Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Via Solari 35, Milano

The Foundation presents a comprehensive retrospective dedicated to Gastone Novelli, one of the leading figures in post-war European painting. The artist, who has been absent from public exhibitions in Milan since the show at the PAC in 1983, is represented here through a selection of about 200 works, some of which are previously unseen. This is the largest exhibition ever dedicated to the artist.

The exhibition is divided into three sections. The first documents the artist's great maturity through his large and monumental works, from Il re delle parole (1961) to Rosso fiore della Cina (1967), over five meters in size, Cancello per sempre la parola (1968), and L’oriente risplende di rosso (1968). In particular, it reconstructs the room at the 1968 Venice Biennale, where Novelli would have likely won one of the major awards, but the exhibition was closed to the public due to the tense atmosphere created by clashes between demonstrators and police. The second section analytically retraces Novelli’s expressive journey from his early maturity (1957) to his death, through a representative selection of paintings and works on paper. The third section highlights Novelli's ventures into areas adjacent to painting, starting with his editorial creations, where he illustrated texts by authors such as Pierre Klossowski, Samuel Beckett, Giorgio Manganelli, Alfredo Giuliani, and initiated key collaborations with writers like Claude Simon, with whom he had a long-lasting friendship, culminating in Simon’s choice to feature Novelli as one of the protagonists in his famous novel Le jardin des plantes. The exhibition presents the original plates and editions of nearly all these publications. Novelli also created historic magazines such as “L’esperienza moderna” and “Grammatica,” which were exemplary in the European climate of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The exhibition, realized in collaboration with the Gastone Novelli Archive and the major collectors of the artist’s work, is curated by Flaminio Gualdoni, artistic director of the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, and by Walter Guadagnini, and benefits from the scientific contributions of scholars such as Brigitte Ferrato-Combe and Giorgio Maffei, as well as loans from museums and the major collectors of the artist's works.
For the occasion, an extensive illustrated catalog has been published by Skira, featuring all the exhibited works, unpublished essays on the artist, and a comprehensive biobibliographic documentation.