ART CITIES:Amsterdam- Pino Pinelli
Inspired by the slightly older Zero artists, Pino Pinelli’s work encapsulates the desire of the era to alter the existence of traditional painting. Through the creation of mixed media geometric forms, Pinelli eliminates the presence of the canvas in its usual form while still hinting at the idea of a painting.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: The Merchant House Archive
“Disseminations” Pino Pinelli’s solo exhibition at The Merchant House in Amsterdam focuses on Pinelli’s magisterial “Disseminations” which have lent an important phenomenal property to his oeuvre since the late ‘70s. By combining simple geometric shapes and predominantly primary colors, Pino Pinelli has created a unique art-form that cannot comfortably be categorized and yet serves as a powerful minimalist statement. Each “Dissemination” operates in the painterly space as an alignment of textured chromatic bodies across a wall surface, orchestrated, according to Pinelli, like drumbeats in a rhythmic cadence. These radical pictureless paintings, installed in dialogue with the artist throughout the galleries of The Merchant House, highlight Pinelli’s transformative contribution to the medium itself. For the exhibition in Amsterdam, the focus is on works combining the three primary colors:red, yellow, and blue, with an explicit connection to Mondrian. Thus, the exhibition is both a commentary on Mondrian’s geometrical translation of nature and on Pinelli’s own, within the nonlinear, curved geometry of his signature color-texture elements. Since his moving to Milan in 1963, Pinelli entered the vanguard debate initiated by Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, and Enrico Castellani. His early series of “Topologies” and “Monochromes” made him one of the leaders of the Analytical Painting. Over time the artist has become empathically acknowledged in academic writings and by the press as an innovator in post-minimal abstraction, who has been strategically and historically forging a most singular creative language.
Info: The Merchant House, Herengracht 254, Amsterdam, Duration: 14/4-15/7/17, Days & Hours: Fri 12:00-19:30, www.merchanthouse.nl
