Riccardo Guarneri: Leggerissima e Insieme Forte. Cinquanta Anni di Pittura

Michela Rizzo Gallery hosts a show by Riccardo Guarneri, master of Italian and International painting. The twenty works exhibited create an anthology of his oeuvre from the end of the sixties until the present day. Some have had a long exhibition career, whilst others, the most recent, have been created especially for the occasion. All of the paintings document the formidable stylistic continuity of an author who from his very debut has made abstraction his exclusive language. Matured in harmony with contemporary international experiences, that of Guarneri is a research that finds in itself the reasons for our own existence, concentrating itself on a repertory of forms, motivations and colours, changing them each time in a diverse manner, allowing for a continual auto-regeneration. From his initial development, the attention of Guarneri for the meta-linguistic aspects of painting made him an important precursor to much of the artistic research that was typical of the sixties.

Geometry, signs, rhythm, transparency, stamps, shading: these are key terms for understanding paintings where the colours separate, losing every material quality they become pure vibrations of light. On surfaces dominated by white, organised always in asymmetric compositions, we see alternating sequences of squares, stripes, strips and diamonds and then traces of pencil that recall writing but in reality never assume a referential value. In the course of the years the rigorous geometric scores of his early period has begun to share space with the ever freer and open coat. The mark has gained in importance, as acrylic and watercolour are spread out liberally, in order to create unusual effects of fusion.

Withstanding their great luminosity, the works of Guarneri remain charged with mystery. They search for the complicity of the spectator, inviting him to take a longer look in order to stabilise a form of intimacy. In doing so one discovers signs, outlines and tonal agreements that are not immediately deducible. Works of this kind express an ideal of stillness and serene concentration. On the other hand, they simultaneously emanate a sense of energy: in the dialect between forms and signs, in the tension between clarity of outline and the evanescence of the mark. The painting of Guarneri is in essence evocative, to explain it in the words of the artist himself, ‘a painting can be light, yet at the same time strong.’