Martelli Fine Art, in collaboration with NP-ArtLab, presents Forma/Colore an exhibition that investigates the use of colour as a primary element in artistic research combined with the two-dimensional forms of painting and the three-dimensional forms of sculpture. Techniques of superimposing colours to create effects of depth and movement.

Works by Dorazio, Consagra and Benevelli will be presented. The exhibition space located in the prestigious Palazzo Cicogna, Corso Monforte 23, stems from the desire to combine the specificities of both gallery owners, allowing for new synergies in Milan.


Biographies

Giacomo Benevelli: Benevelli was born in Reggio Emilia in 1925 and had been active on the Milanese, national and international art scene since the late 1950s.
A sculptor of the Milanese school of abstractionism, Benevelli belonged to the group of sculptors of the generation following Marino Marini that had emerged in post-war Milan. His public works include Teleios, a bronze from the 1990s placed in Piazzale Loreto in Milan, and Edificante, a vertical bronze in the atrium of Milan's Genio Civile. Over the years, Benevelli explored the possibilities of the plastic form in its multiple functions, approaching since the 1960s the application of creative plastic solutions within design, as in the Arabesque and Roto lamps he created. Also in the 1960s, after his participation in the XXXXII Venice Biennial, Benevelli exhibited in the United States represented by the Felix Landau Gallery in Los Angeles, whose clients included Elizabeth Taylor, who bought one of his bronze sculptures from the ‘Organic Matrices’ series, visible in various scenes in the film ‘Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf’. More recent is Giacomo Benevelli's collaboration with the Natuzzi brand for the creation of a line of objects such as the three lamps - sculpture signed by him, Apollo, Daphne and Clizia and other objects - sculpture already presented at the last Salone del Mobile in Milan and at the Cologne design fair in Germany.
A scholar and investigator of form in all its specificities, Benevelli published with Rizzoli a book he illustrated, entitled Dalla Pietra all'Ago (From Stone to Needle), in which he explores the evolution of the tool from pure stone to the reasoned and conscious realisation of the first human artefacts. Numerous works of sacred art have been realised by Benevelli within newly built churches or sculptural interventions within ancient sacred buildings. A professor of Ornate Modelling at Brera for over thirty years, Benevelli has always cultivated an active confrontation and debate with younger generations on the themes of the evolution of plastic form even within transforming urban spaces. In his work, Benevelli has always loved experimenting with new materials, such as the recent production of large sculptures in synthetic fibreglass already exhibited at Palazzo Isimbardi in Milan, as part of a travelling solo exhibition that also hosted his works in the historic Casa del Mantegna in Mantua. In 2006, on the occasion of the 20th Winter Olympics in Turin, Benevelli was invited by the Presidency of the Italian Republic to exhibit one of his works as part of the representative exhibition of contemporary Italian sculpture at Palazzina Stupinigi. Over the course of his long career, Benevelli participated in the Venice Biennale and the travelling exhibitions of the Quadriennale di Roma dedicated to Italian sculpture, exhibiting in the world's major museums.
Benevelli's works are held in important public and private collections in Italy and abroad such as the City of Milan Art Collection, the Bank of Italy Collection, the Intesa San Paolo Collection at Palazzo Leoni Montanari in Vicenza, the Museum of Modern Art at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, and the British Museum in London. Benevelli was an Academician of the Pontificia Accademia Tiberina, won the City of Milan Prize, received the gold medal of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic, and was recently invited together with other Milanese personalities to be part of the jury for the selection of a new sculpture to be placed in the new spaces of the Niguarda Hospital inaugurated by Archbishop Tettamanzi.

Pietro Consagra: Pietro Consagra was born in Mazara del Vallo, Sicily, on October 4, 1920. He attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Palermo from 1938 to 1944, and subsequently moved to Rome. He first traveled to Paris in 1946 after participating in his first group exhibition in Rome at the Galleria del Cortile. In 1947 he was a founding member of the Forma 1 group, which promoted a socially oriented non-figurative aesthetic. Forma 1 held the first show of non-figurative art in postwar Rome, Mostra del Gruppo Forma I, at the Art Club, and published a journal on contemporary aesthetics entitled Forma I. Consagra’s first solo show took place in 1947 at the Galleria Mola in Rome. In 1949 he contributed his work to the Mostra di scultura contemporanea exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. Consagra was given solo exhibitions at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, in 1958; at the Galerie de France in Paris, in 1959; at the Museum Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, in 1967; and at the Marlborough Gallery in Rome, in 1974. The artist was awarded a prize at the São Paulo Bienal in 1955, and participated frequently in the Venice Biennale, where he was awarded the Einaudi Prize in 1956 and a Grand Prize for Sculpture in 1960. In 1962 he was given his first solo show in New York at Staempfli Gallery, and participated in the I Grandi Premi della Biennale 1948-1960 exhibition at Ca’ Pesaro Galleria internazionale d'arte moderna in Venice. In 1964 he executed a fountain in Mazara del Vallo. Consagra wrote at length about his art. His polemical pamphlet of 1952, La necessità della scultura, which was an important refutation of Arturo Martini’s La scultura lingua morta, was followed by L’agguato c’è (1961), and La città frontale (1969). A major retrospective of his work was held at the Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna in Rome in 1989, where a permanent installation of his works was opened in 1993. In 1991, he became the first abstract sculptor to exhibit at the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. The Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart opened a permanent installation of his paintings and sculptures in 2002. The same year, a solo show took place at the Museo d’Arte Moderna, Bolzano, then traveled to Palazzo Sertoli and Palazzo Pretorio in Sondrio. Pietro Consagra died on July 16, 2005, in Milan.

Piero Dorazio: Piero Dorazio was born on June 29, 1927, in Rome, where he undertook formal studies in architecture at the University of Rome from 1945 to 1951. About the same time he joined the Arte Sociale group, which published single issues of Ariele and La Fabbrica. In 1947 he co-founded the group Forma 1, which produced the Manifesto del Formalismo-Forma 1. Also in 1947, Dorazio was awarded a scholarship to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he spent a year and met Jean Arp, Georges Braque, Sonia Delaunay, Le Corbusier, Gino Severini, Antoine Pevsner, Georges Vantongerloo, and other prominent artists. In 1950 he helped organize the cooperative gallery of the Age d’Or group in Rome and Florence and in 1952 promoted the international foundation Origine in Rome, which published the periodical Arti Visive. In 1953 he traveled to the United States, where he met Clement Greenberg, Frederick Kiesler, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and gave his first solo exhibitions at the Wittenborn One-Wall Gallery and the Rose Fried Gallery in New York. After returning to Rome in 1954, Dorazio periodically visited Paris, London and Berlin, where he became a friend of Will Grohmann and the dealer Rudolf Springer. His book La fantasia dell’arte nella vita moderna appeared in 1955. He traveled to Switzerland, Spain, and Antibes in 1957, the year of his first solo show in Rome, at the Galleria La Tartaruga. From 1960 to 1969 he taught at the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania and subsequently held many academic positions in the United States. He visited Greece, Africa and the Middle East in 1970 and in 1974 settled in Todi, Italy. Among the several exhibitions of his work organized in Italy and in foreign countries are those at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1979, at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo in 1979, and at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome in 1983. He participated in major international shows, such as the Venice Biennale, where the artist exhibited in 1960, 1966, and 1988. During the following years he had private and public commissions such the creation of mosaics in the subway stations of Rome. Dorazio died in Perugia on May 17, 2005.

IT



ARTISTS 

Giacomo Benevelli
Pietro Consagra
Piero Dorazio 

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