After the events of July 2015 in Spoleto, the Foundation Carriero has organized an important exhibition on Leoncillo in Milan, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth; the exhibition aims at drawing a parallel between Leoncillo and another extremely important XXth-cen artist, Lucio Fontana. “Fontana · Leoncillo forma della materia”, is open from April 6 to July 9 at the Milanese foundation’s headquarters; a catalogue is also being published.
The exhibition “FONTANA – LEONCILLO forma della materia” (Italian for “The form of matter”) takes the cue from the 1964 XXVIIth Venice Biennale, in which both artists took part; and for both artists, that experience marked a turning point in their artistic research.
Roberto Longhi presents a series of 22 sculptures that still echo Cubism. The parallel drawn between the two artists highlights the pivotal role of Leoncillo in the history of sculpture, on the other hand it also shows Fontana’s radical will to open the volumes, overcome matter, build around the void and create space. Through overlapping and confrontations, Fontana’s sculptural worries in a mainly bidimensional frame are highlighted in relation with Leoncillo’s pictorial approach to sculpture. Through a passionate, uncompromising research on MATTER-COLOUR-SPACE , Leoncillo and Fontana work out the contrast between two then-prevailing concepts, by synthesizing Abstract Art and Realism and disclosing the unity (and truth) of matter.
In Leoncillo’s 1957 Piccolo diario, the artist asks the earth “a new natural object that evolves through stratifications, cracks and rips that are our own, like our breath. No more colour then… just matter that has a colour we’ll show later. No longer volume… And clay becomes our matter, for the deeds we do with and on it… deeds that sprout from fury, from sweetness, from despair, grounded by our being alive and by what we hear and see”.
Further info: http://fondazionecarriero.org/it/
