Mario Nigro: From “Vertical Rhythm” to “Total Time”

The solo show is dedicated to the artistic life of the famous Italian painter, and retraces back important moments and developments within 20 years of his career – from 1948 to 1968. The exhibition, which is realized collaboration with the Archivio Mario Nigro, presents the artist’s fundamental process in developing a visual language, which led from his Ritmo verticale (Vertical Rhythm) of 1948 through to the works shown at the 34th Venice Biennale in 1968.

Within the selection of works made from 1950 onwards, the artist’s earlier works show a more abstract-constructive style and a tension between space and form. His later works rather focus on the concept of time. Works from 1956 onwards, the year of Soviet’s invasion of Hungary, show completely different techniques, methods and topics. As his political and ideological certainties were shattered, his faith in the absolute purity of geometry was lost, making way for a gradual intensification and then disintegration of his spatial grids, until they disappeared altogether. In the final room of the exhibition, Nigro’s works from the 34th Venice Biennale in 1968 are presented, which have been crucial in cementing his reputation on an international level.

The entire exhibition at A arte Invernizzi is in this new synergy between time and space that Nigro’s works achieve their absolute immersion, in and during the viewer finds oneself not only in the representation of existence but in its concrete and dramatic manifestation.

Accommodating the exhibition, a bilingual volume will be published with reproductions of the exhibited works, an introductory essay by Luca Massimo Barbero and bio-bibliographical notes on the artist.