The repetitiveness of the gesture, to the point of boredom, is a value for many artists. Not for Gianfranco Pardi, an out-of-the-box artist par excellence, a perennial migrant but profoundly consistent with a personal, clear and unequivocal style that has characterized all of his oeuvre, from the "Giardini Pensili" of the late XNUMXs to his more recent works. Cultured, restless, curious, never banal. Always looking for new techniques and new languages to represent his visionary passion. The works that first come to the attention of critics and collectors are his Architectures, where it is the painting that traces the surface through construction methods that the materiality brings close to sculpture.
Pardi's research, from the beginning, is proposed as a continuous investigation of space and its representation. Through rigorous planning, the artist integrates the techniques of painting, drawing and sculpture to reveal the dynamics and relationships between form and matter. This process is one of the foundations of his work, as well as the architectural studies that lead him to a re-reading of the historical avant-gardes such as Abstractionism, Suprematism, Constructivism.
In 1967 Pardi began his collaboration with Studio Marconi in Milan, and for the following ten years his reflections on architecture were predominant. Roof garden of 1968 is an emblematic work in this sense: "the artist - writes the critic Bruno Cora presenting a large anthology staged simultaneously at the beginning of 2018 by the Cortesi and Marconi galleries - who exhaustively went through all the phases of the research by Pardi – offers us the vision of a place that can be real but at the same time imaginary, in which architectural structures and naturalistic cues, real and pictorial details merge”.
In the early seventies he concentrated on the series Architecture. In addition to color, cables and metal surfaces make their appearance on the canvas: the artist marks and overcomes the boundaries between painting and sculpture. System of 1976, with its complex structure of a pentagon inscribed in a circle and divided into three parts - a wooden relief, a canvas that reveals the traces of the geometric construction and a sculpture that follows the shape of the pentagon - is configured, in the intentions of the artist, as the analysis of a system that relates painting, drawing and sculpture.
The series of Diagonals belong to the early eighties, straight lines, whose fast rhythm oscillates between black and white, in search of new montages and movements. Followed by the Plants and the Apses and the cycles entitled Cinema and Body Building. In the 2011s, the series of Masks and the Sainte Victoire Mountain appeared, a clear reference to Cézanne and a total reflection on painting. Then there are the series of Nagjma, which in Arabic means "star", born from the artist's long stays in Tangier, in a sort of re-enactment of the journey south experienced by Paul Klee or Henri Matisse; and the Boxes made with cardboard boxes, in which Pardi's interest in painting is growing, albeit always with geometric elements and architectural references. The most recent Untitled of XNUMX concludes the itinerary, a series of acrylics on canvas in which the chromatic range reduced to a few tones, whites, blacks and grays, seems to want to recall fresco painting. “Pardi has introduced a series of forms, methods, tracings and materials that had never before had citizenship on the canvas”, underlines Bruno Corà.
Gianfranco Pardi (Milan 1933-2012)
Emerged unscathed from any homologation in a period (the seventies) in which belonging to a "group" - theorized and preached at length by a dominus like Giulio Carlo Argan and by the large group of his disciples - seemed to be an indispensable constraint for entering to fully belong to the Art System, Pardi – recalls the critic Massimo Mattioli – remained faithful (until the end) to his creed by refusing to become part of the “choir”. Like other artists, few in truth - he has always preferred the rigor and freedom of research to the social projection of his work, which he did not outsource to shared messages to be offered to the market or to ambitious critics to indulge.
From the outset, his research has focused on space and constructive planning that gives life to works of great formal rigour, characterized by the integration of drawing, painting and sculpture in a spatial dimension of architectural breadth. In 1959 his first solo exhibition was held in Brescia, at the Galleria Alberti, while the following year it was hosted by the Galleria Colonna in Milan. During the 1965s he developed a style that integrated drawing, painting, sculpture and architecture. His participation in the collective exhibition dates back to XNUMX Narrative figuration in contemporary art in Paris. In 1967 he began his collaboration with Studio Marconi in Milan and dedicated himself to the creation of works that are a reinterpretation of the historical avant-gardes such as Abstractionism, Suprematism, Constructivism and Neoplasticism. In the seventies he developed his own Architectures the will to build and found a space through painting, since he believes that this means of expression can immediately produce the idea. In 1974, and later in 1993, he took part in the XXVII Biennial at the Palazzo della Permanente in Milan. In 1981 he was part of two important group exhibitions such as Lines of artistic research in Italy 1960/1980, at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, e The place of form, at the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona. In 1986 he took part in the Venice Biennale with a personal room; in the same year you are present at the Milan Triennale and at the Rome Quadrennial. In 1998 Palazzo Reale in Milan hosted a one-man exhibition of him. In 1999 he was in Germany with three important exhibitions in public institutions. In addition to the historic partnership with the Giorgio Marconi Gallery and above all with the artists of its stables, starting with his great friend Emilio Tadini, more recently the Fumagalli Gallery in Bergamo has played an important role in the promotion and development of Pardi's work. Pardi's activity as a sculptor was also intense: an example for all was “Dance” in Pazza Amendola in Milan. His works can be found in numerous public and private spaces in Italy and abroad: from the Museo del Novecento to the Gallerie d'Italia in Milan, to the Mart in Rovereto to the National Gallery in Rome to the Gnam in Turin. Member of the National Academy of San Luca since 2008, he died on February 2, 2012 in his home studio in Milan at the age of 78. In October 2013, the Gianfranco Pardi Cultural Association was established in memory of the artist with the aim of promoting and disseminating his knowledge and figure.
The market
Towards the middle of 2013, also thanks to the excellent work done by his reference galleries (Cortesi and Marconi in Milan), the prices of Gianfranco Pardi's works began a progressive and constant rise. The works are sold in the main international auctions (to date over 350 of different types have been auctioned), with a percentage sold that exceeds 70% and with a turnover that in 2017 came close to 200 thousand euros.
Gallery: Marconi of Milan and Cortesi Gallery with offices in Milan, Lugano and London. In Paris, his works are treated by Galerie Balice Hertling.
Prezzi: for recent works it ranges from eight thousand euros for medium-sized formats (100×80 cm.) up to over 20 thousand. The sculptures start at around 15 thousand euros and can exceed 100 thousand for the large dimensions. Highly sought after by collectors the “Hanging gardens”from the 60s early 70s and the Architectures from the 70s (increasingly rare) purchased at more than double the value of recent works. Recently, the market's attention has also been shifting to the works of the 80s, in particular to the "Diagonals".
Top price at auction: "architectures”, mixed technique 150×150 cm from 1975, changed hands for 40 thousand euros (including royalties) at the Il Ponte auction house in Milan in December 2016. In April of the following year, at Christie's in Milan, “Roof garden” of 1969, acrylic on aluminum 160×200 cm, nearly reached 50 euros (including royalties), tripling the value of the estimates.
