From 13 May to 20 August 2018, the MARCA – Museum of Arts of Catanzaro, directed by Rocco Guglielmo, hosts the anthology of Marcus Petrus (1960)
The Exhibition entitled Anthology 2003 – 2017, is curated by Elena Pontiggia, and presents 35 large-scale works including some unpublished paintings from the series From the Beautiful Cities of 2012.
"Petrus, as Elena Pontiggia says, through the representation of the masterpieces of Muzio or Terragni, Varisco or Portaluppi has painted not only architectures, but also the balance or, more often, the imbalance in which we are immersed. He painted the order, the constructive capacity, the proactive vocation, but also the towers of Babel that we meet in our lives. Architecture, in his paintings, also becomes something unsafe, when at the end of the nineties his buildings begin to lean, to lean obliquely like modern towers of Pisa. Or it becomes something enigmatic and incongruous."
With this cycle of works, Petrus takes us inside the typologies, particularities, glimpses, symbols and characteristics of the urban space built during his investigation of the various cities of the world, and in particular Milan, thus creating a "urban atlas” immaterial and ideally widespread, almost a modern one Metropolitan Encyclopédie.
In the great central hall of the Marca we find the unpublished works From the Beautiful Cities with several upside Down, including two admired in New York on the occasion of Columbus day in 2005.
The exhibition closes with a selection of works inspired by the architecture of various European cities: Budapest, Ljubljana, Prague, as well as Naples and Trieste.
Petrus' work on the urban landscape focuses on the cities where he lived or where he was invited to exhibit such as London, New York or Shanghai, but also in many other capitals.
His research is nothing more than a survey of urban structures, where all the characteristics of architecture are found. Ontemporary.
Marcus Petrus (Rimini 1960), since 2000 he has exhibited in Santa Fe, Milan, Moscow, Venice, New York, London, Rome, alternating important international galleries with prestigious public spaces (the Shanghai Art Museum, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Palazzo Reale in Milan or the Complesso del Vittoriano in Rome), continuing to focus not only on the Italian urban landscape, but also on the buildings of London, Marseilles, those of New York, or Shanghai, or other major European and non-European capitals.
