Artists' portfolio: Pino Pinelli, the dissemination artist

After the definitive gesture of Lucio Fontana, compete with space has become the challenge indispensable for entire generations of postwar artists. Break the limits imposed for centuries from the structure of the painting to project itself into the universe boundless it was the password that animated the Italian art scene of end of years fifty and the first sixties. A thorough search, deep, that often hatook different paths and is laid the foundations of the new expressive languages, scoring in definitively the path of contemporary art. In this climate of great ferments and immense passions, Pino Pinelli, born in Catania in 1938, arrives in Milan. It is 1964 and the Milanese artistic community revolves around the mythical Bar Jamaica, is animated not only by the master par excellence, Lucio Fontana, from the Dadaist "provocations" of Piero Manzoni, from the restless genius of Enrico Baj. And around them a host of artists, young and old, looking for one identity, of the stroke of genius, of the great gesture, which consecrates them definitively paving the way for them to success which does not always come to everyone.

Pino Pinelli looks, observes, smells, but like a good Sicilian he doesn't jump into it melee. He is a painter and to provocations (although he loves those of Manzoni) prefers painting. It's more in his pocket. However he hears the call of space. Of that immense surface opened by Fontana with his "cut" liberating. Initially he joins and immediately becomes one of the protagonists of that current that Filiberto Menna defines as “Analytical Painting” in which yes distinguished by the monochromaticity of his works. Giorgio Griffa, Claudio Olivieri,Claudio Verna, among others, are his traveling companions. But his character restless and passionate and the sacred fire of research from which it is constantly animated they push him further. He too, like Fontana, feels suffocated within the framework, wants to overcome that limit, cross that threshold, without however giving up painting. And so comes the big insight: with an equally definitive gesture, Pinelli "tears" the canvas. He reduces her to many“fragments” that he disseminates in an organized way in the space. Thus began for Pino Pinelli the season of "disseminations" which consists precisely in imaginary "break" of picture and in the placement on the wall di “fragments”, “scaglie”, “modules” which, reconfiguring itself according to a new relationship with spatiality, become the work itself. “What Pinelli pursues – the well-known says of him critical Bruno Corà – is the tactile exaltation of the chromatic value where the viewer is called to react in real time to the extension of the shapes in space. The work does not in any way limit the possibility of savoring the magnetism that emerges from each element, the ever-changing treatment of the surface, the imperceptible presence of the touches of the hand that make the colored skin alive and palpitating”. The concept of "fragment as a partial entity", to use the words of Bruno Corà, foresees that the geometric shapes present themselves to the viewer as so many residues split off and made autonomous by an original unit which is the painting: the foundation which underlies of the practice reductionist of that analytical conceptualism of the 70s which saw in Pinelli an authoritative representative. The white wall thus becomes the primary spatial support through which the forms/fragments manage to communicate and expose themselves in the form of autonomous and independent elements, communicating and self-signifying, in search of a new and original union. It's regular cuts waited of Fontana connecting Pinelli's tendency to present his works through a rhythmic methodology, almost symphonic, marked by constant intervals, second a code very similar to the syntactic one.

The continuous experiments Pinelli's pictorial lead him to the achievement of a degree of conception of the artistic potential of color which manifests an enormous evolution and at the same time an inseparable link with the early works: to the component more ductile than painting, a plastic value is attributed, to the point of considering it like a real object. The forms/fragments are therefore no longer simple two-dimensional monochrome shapes displayed on a wall but, thanks to the mixed technique of coloring the material, they become real forms three-dimensional that conquer the exhibition space. In placing his works on the wall, the artist performs the arched gesture of disseminator, inspired by the classic ritual of the sower who brings rebirth new life. “In painting, my painting generates itself, the brushstroke does it solidifies, it gives itself a body, it expands the possibilities of painting from within” he says di himself the artist. Pinelli, therefore, does not paint, but paints. A painting 'bodyyou know what second the critic George Bonomi "is the materialization of a abstract concept, is organized, always on the wall, with two trends of forces equal and opposite. From time to time there is now a kind of explosion and then a large centrifugal force field, now, instead, a sort of implosion with a great centripetal force; but always with a harmony and a measured balance, such that often, speaking of Pinelli, one compares his own opera to musical progression, from Bach to Nono”.

That "immanent physicality – explains Marco Meneguzzo, critic, writer and author of a monumental anthology on Analytical Painting (Silvana Editore) – has transformed into something transcendent, passing from the operational state of the 'making painting' to the initially denied one of 'contemplation'. So, one volta 'detached from the hand'of the craftsman, having broken the umbilical cord with the artist, behold his works, which were to be there tangible demonstration of an action that does not it concerned only itself, which explained nothing else that their own making, gradually return, slowly to the auratic status of art. Contrary to many other artistic expressions that is, this way of making art does not begin to release energy starting from the moment in which begins to err only for the world, but instead he buys it: it is a point of concentration and not a point of radiation. The look – and there mind behind it – in front of the object silent which finds its raison d'être in itself itself, and which therefore is potentiallyself-sufficient, does not resist this exclusion, to this marginalization of one's own horizon affective and emotional, and begins to load the artistic object of a series of considerations emotional, to make it the recipient of the free ones associations, to define it as the casket of contemplative intentions".

Pino Pinelli

NBorn in Catania in 1938 where he has frsequentiated art schools, nel 1964 he moved to Milan dwhere he still lives and works. Numerous personal exhibitions in galleries private and public, in Italy and abroad, especially in Germany and France. Among the most those at the Kunstverein Villa Franck are significant of Ludwigsburg, at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire by Langres, at the Versiliana of Pietrasanta. He was invited to the 1986 editions and of 1997 of the Venice Biennale and those of 1986 and 2005 of the Quadrennial of Rome.Among the numerous exhibitions personal and collective, we recall the exhibitions in some important museums: the Galleria Civica in Turin,the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, the National Gallery in Rome, the Villa Arson in Nice, the Kunsthalle in Darmstadt, the Palazzo della Permanente in Milan, the Landesgalerie of Linz, the DuMont Kunsthalle of Cologne, the Art Gallery Modern of Bologna. In addition, the historical exhibitions "Empirica" ​​at the Museum of Castelvecchio di Verona in 1975, "Cronaca" of 1976 at the Civic Gallery of Modena, "Lines of artistic research in Italy" of 1981 at the Palazzo delle Rome exhibitions. in 2016 his work was staged at the MAMM in Moscow and at the Palazzo della Cultura in Catania. In 2017 the Marca di Catanzaro dedicated a large retrospective to him. In 2018, the Maestro is celebrated in Milan, his adopted city: two major exhibitions at the same time, a Royal Palace and Galleries of Italy cared for by Francesco Tedeschi, from 10 July to 16 September 2018.

Market: Compressed by the excellent performances of Arte Povera (60s) and by the initial success of the Transavantgarde (80s), the mmarket of the masters ofAnalytical Painting (70s), of which Pinelli is one of the leading exponents, has suffered for many years. The inevitable recovery can be dated around 2010, even if a "healthy" process of consolidation of the quotations has been underway in the last two years which moreover it concerns a bit all Italian art. In this context, Pino Pinelli's transfer market showed everythinga its effervescence, with a tonic and constant growth also supported by its reference galleries. Suffice it to say that according to the Artprice index, 100 euros invested in one of his works in 2001 is now worth 1.266 euros. Almost 900 passages in the auction, in the various types, with a percentage of sold close to 70% and an invoiceto which in 2017 was close to 400 thousand euros.

Land galleries: Dept. Art di Milan, Claudio Poleschi of San Marino,  Santo Ficara of Florence and Ferrarin of Verona and Lugano. There are also numerous galleries that represent him abroad: Boon gallery in Knoke (Belgium); De Buck gallery in New York and Antwerp; Pearl Lam in Hong Kong; The Merchant House a Amsterdam

Prezzi: for recent work (from the 2000s onwards) let's go 10 ai 20 thousand euros for small and medium formats up to over 50 thousand for large installations. The works now considered "historical" and increasingly unobtainable from the 70s are particularly sought after by collectors: a medium-sized work from that period costs between 50 and 70 thousand euros, up to over 100 thousand euros for large installations. Interest also for the 80s: a medium-sized work varies from 40 to 60 thousand euros.

Top price at auction: "Painting Gr."1975 – acrylic on flannel 30x30x3 cm. (three elements) was sold for 50 euros (plus auction fees) by Farsetti in Prato in May 2017. A similar work but smaller in size (Painting Gr. 1976 – 15x18x3 cm) the year before it had changed hands for almost 35 euros at Christie's in London.