"La beauté est dans la rue", slogan of the French May, can be considered the concept of the exhibition which, despite crossing a chronological path of three decades, is not an anthology but a themed review, focused on the constant dialogue that Pablo Echaurren entertains with the expressions of communication, following the paths of research aimed at breaking down cultural separations and thus widening the walls of the aesthetic beyond the institutional boundaries.
Certain expressive modes of metropolitan graffiti, the lively use of colors, art as a direct means of (counter) information, that not distinguishing between high and low are elements that anticipate the diffusion of today's so-called street-art , and therefore allow us to consider Pablo Echaurren a forerunner of the genre.
In these works, which recall the iconographic communication of the Berlin Wall, a scenario of metropolitan graffiti emerges, written cancellations, comic finds, emblems and allegorical figures of medieval ancestry, stereotyped languages and signs of our communicating system.
One section is dedicated to collages produced in the XNUMXs. The perceptive shock caused by the big city is depicted in these visual synthesis of the urban landscape based on the montage of torn posters, announcements, signs, headlines, alarming signs, which convey the sense of simultaneous perception.
Mural communication also appears in the most recent production, the "wall against wall paintings" with their unprecedented symbolic alphabet of erased wall writings, vivid representations of a world made up of contrasts, of opposing factions that overlap each other.
These works are counterbalanced by some paintings on the art system and its aggressive planetary strategies, which once again testify to the need to give shape to that critical and social tension, intellectually lucid, typical of the artist's research.
Francesca Mezzano, curator of the exhibition explains: «Pablo Echaurren's art was born to speak to the community. He does it without fences, experimenting with every possible form of expression; uses the sign, the writing, the stencil, the lettering, the word as a common language, canceling any distinction between high and low, in the constant search for a harmony with the present history, with its problems, and its criticalities hidden from the gaze common. And he does it by always expressing himself through a lively and incandescent imagery, which can translate a political and moral issue into art. What Pablo himself called "the mural question". ».
Prof. Avv. Emmanuele FM Emanuele of the Fondazione Terzo Pilastro – Italia e Mediterraneo, which promotes and organizes the event, adds: «The exhibition we are presenting here – the ideal continuum of the retrospective hosted in 2010 at Palazzo Cipolla in Rome – has over 150 works, all united by a constant and inevitable dialogue with the present history, mirror and synthesis of a restless society and its human parabola, as we have lived it in the last four decades. Echaurren is intimately a contemporary and metropolitan man: he does not rise above the masses as a poet bearer of the Truth, but actively and passionately participates - without wearing political colors or embracing any ideology - in the dialectic that arises, feeds and spreads spontaneously on the streets, among the people, on the walls. And it is precisely the wall – hence the title of this exhibition, “Soft Wall” – the privileged means through which the artist communicates his message: the same wall on which urban society writes its history over the years becomes in fact protagonist of his artistic research, be it a "soft" wall, made of canvas, or a real piece of city wall.»
In fact, the exhibition also includes collages and maps, memories of travels, of psycho-geographical walks spent dredging paper finds, stickers, tickets, shreds of memorials on the urban walls that build emotional and mental landscapes of the modern city crossed by a widespread art.
Pablo Echaurren was born in Rome in 1951. He began to paint at the age of eighteen and, through Gianfranco Baruchello, he was discovered by the critic and gallery owner Arturo Schwarz who made his work known in Italy and abroad. Between 1971 and 1975 he exhibited in Berlin, Basel, Philadelphia, Zurich, New York, Brussels and in 1975 he was invited to the Paris Biennale.
His debut takes place under the banner of an alternative minimalism, conceptuality and anti-pictoriality to the idea of a work of art as a fetish. This is the direction in which the artist has moved since then, always looking for new languages and new forms of expression, without ever settling on what has already been done.?
Not only a painter, he engaged in an intense applied activity, creating illustrations, posters and covers, including that of the best seller Porci con le ali, as well as "meta comics" that investigate the possible relationship between avant-garde and popular art, looking for the necessary and fruitful short-circuit between high and low, between culture and lightness, in harmony with the ideal of a widespread art. His creativity has also developed in the field of writing, publishing novels and pamphlets on the art world.
After the year 2004, his multifaceted production was presented in some personal exhibitions: Pablo Echaurren. From the seventies to today (Chiostro del Bramante, Rome 2008); Pablo Echaurren in Siena (Palazzo Pubblico, Siena 2010); Crhomo Sapiens (Museum of the Rome Foundation, Palazzo Cipolla, Rome 2011-2011); Leave your mark (MAR, Ravenna 2006); To the rhythm of the Ramones (Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome 2009); The invention of the bass (Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome 2011); Baroque'n'Roll (MACRO, Rome 2013); Matta: Roberto Sebastian Matta, Gordon Matta-Clark, Pablo Echaurren (Querini Stampalia Foundation, Venice 2014); Iconoclast (Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London 2015); Counterpainting (National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rome 2016-2016); Make Art Not Money (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile 2017); Du champ magnétique (Scala Contarini del Bovolo, Venice XNUMX).
