27 Mar 2010

Mario Nigro: 'Catalogue raisonne' presentation in Milan

On Wednesday 31 March 2010 at 6.30 pm, in the conference room of the Palazzo Reale in Milan, Skira Editore, in collaboration with Palazzo Reale, will present the catalogue raisonné of the works of Mario Nigro, curated by Germano Celant.

Those participating include Luca Massimo Barbero, Maria Teresa Roberto and Giorgio Verzotti; Gianni Nigro, president of the Archivio Mario Nigro, will also be present.

Mario Nigro (1917–1992) played a leading, international role in abstract art beginning in the late 1940s. Drawing upon a solid scientific and musical background, his dynamic abstractionism combines the chromatic freedom of Wassili Kandinsky with the geometric structuring of Piet Mondrian while also establishing a vital dialogue with architecture from the 1960s onwards. Elementary forms, primary colours, interweaving shapes and lines are deployed in pursuit of total space and time in visual variations and modulations that paved the way for the work on sign and colour that was to characterize the radical and minimalist trends of later decades.

Edited by Germano Celant and complete with a documentary chronology that also reconstructs the creative context, this volume constitutes the first scientific and systematic survey of Mario Nigro's coherent and multiform work from 1947, the year in which his expressive vocabulary attained maturity, until his death. Forty-five years of activity during which the artist constantly varied his visual language while remaining true to his cognitive idea of art and anticipating trends and approaches in a dialogue with the international art scene.

Germano Celant has been Senior Curator for contemporary art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, since 1989 and Artistic Director of the Fondazione Prada, Milan, since 1995. Internationally recognized for his theoretical delineation of the Arte Povera movement, he received the Frank Jewett Mather Award from the College Art Association of America in 1987 as well as an honorary degree in Architecture from Genoa University in 2004. He was curator of the 47th Venice Biennial in 1997 and artistic supervisor for Genoa's year as European Capital of Culture in 2004, in connection with which he organized the exhibition 'Architecture & Arts, 1900/2000'. He has been Director of the Fondazione Aldo Rossi, Milan, since 2007 as well as contributing editor of Artforum and Interview (New York) since 1977 and 1991 respectively. He is also the art contributor for the weekly magazine L'Espresso (Rome) since October 1999.