ART CITIES: Athens-Pier Paolo Calzolari

Pier Paolo Calzolari is considered one of the most important living protagonists of the Arte Povera movement. Yet his artistic output goes far beyond whatever perceived limitations are implied by his association with that label. Indeed, he is somewhat of an aesthetic maverick. Evidence for that fact came early in his career, when Calzolari was included in the exhibition “When Attitudes Become Form” which was first mounted in Bern in 1969.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Bernier/Eliades Gallery Archive

Pier Paolo Calzolari distinguished himself from other Arte Povera artists through his refusal of the avant-garde’s rejection of the past. His work seeks an equal and horizontal relationship between past, present and future. While his work shared similarities, it veered in a unique direction, bringing in elements of Renaissance painting and the Romantic movement. Calzolari’s sculptural installations are known for capturing ephemera and use elemental materials including frost, fire, salt, lead, water, copper, neon, moss, roses, feathers, eggs and tobacco leaves. In “demons and dew”, his solo exhibition at Bernier/Eliades, Pier Paolo Calzolari presents 20 new works in which he continues to incorporate sculptural elements made of organic matter, such as salt, feathers, clover petals and shells. His new use of raw pigment powders and tempera in strikingly saturated colors give these new works an exuberance that is both radiant and sensual. The luminous canvases include fields of bright primary yellows, reds, blues and whites with varied surfaces and textures that evoke nature in the form of sunlight, fire and the night sky, making this exhibition a meditation on the transience and delicate beauty of everyday life. The practice of painting for Calzolari is a “listening instrument,” a state of “suspension” capable of leading to the synthesis the multiple articulations of his artistic research, which is at the same time minimalist and sensual, conceptual and Baroque. Calzolari spent his youth in Venice, where he was influenced by distinctive elements of Venetian painting, such as luminist effects and the reflection of the light on architectural surfaces. Adopting in his works elementary and often organic materials (ice, fire, salt, lead, tobacco leaves, moss, burnt wood, walnuts, animal shells, along with neon and felt) Calzolari realized paintings and drawings which represent a characteristic and a fundamental component of his artistic practice, delineating a reflection on the relationships between color, form, object and environment. In his works Calzolari has retraced and freely compared apparently antithetical elements and concepts such as natural materials and pictorial representation, abstraction and figuration, visual and performative dimension, space-time of the work and the environment in which it is inserted, reshaping it.

Pier Paolo Calzolari was born in Bologna in 1943 and spent his you in Venice where he was influenced by the city’s particular light and its reflection on the marble of the buildings. These observations lead him to working with one of his most unique and defining materials in the form of frost to illustrate the perfect white, as it only can exist in nature. His other materials are also elemental and frequently organic: fire, salt, lead, tobacco, moss, burnt wood, oyster shells, tobacco leaves, felt neon, and on occasion butter. While Calzolari may be classified as an installation artist, his practice also includes painting, sculpture and performance. He created “Happenings” as early as 1966, drawing viewers into his artwork as performers in what he termed “An activation of space”. In the 1968 text “La casa ideale” he wrote “I would like people to know that I want expansion, democracy, madness, alchemy, craziness, rhythm, horizontality. I mean I want to be elementary, I want to commit acts of passion”. This text and it’s realization through a series of works, is considered one of the seminal statements of Arte Povera. Over the subsequent decades Calzolari has continued to experiment, exploring his ongoing interest in light, matter, and time within these media. Calzolari’s works bring everyday ritual to the level of aesthetic experience, in a horizontal relationship with the world and history. Their power is characterized by unique elements, such as the search for a saturation of the senses that verges on insanity, the way in which he makes visible the abstractions of thought and the essence of things, the special attention focused on the fragility of objects and materials. During the last years the artist has been living and working in Lisbon, Portugal.

Photo: Pier Paolo Calzolari, Untitled, 2021, Salt, dyes, oil pastel, pastel à l’Ecu, lead, copper, oyster, 160 x 170cm, credits: Michele Alberto Sereni, © Courtesy Archivio Fondaziole Calzolari

Info: Bernier/Eliades Gallery, 11 Eptachalkou Street, Athens, Greece, Duration: 24/11/2022-26/1/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:30-18:30, Sat 12:00-16:00, https://bernier-eliades.com/