A Milan from 28 September will open the exhibition on Arthur Bonfanti Cabaret du neiant dedicated to the figure of one of the most important protagonists of the Italian post-war art scene and who was able to create a very personal language within the pictorial tradition of the peninsula. In an ideal dialogue, two important exponents of the international abstract scene of the second half of the last century, Julius Bissier and Victor Pasmore, will also participate in the exhibition. The inauguration of the exhibition curated by Roberto Borghi and Matteo Lorenzelli will take place on Thursday 27 September at 18.30 in the studio Lorenzelli Art in Corso Buenos Aires 2 and can be visited until 17 November 2018.
In the official note by Lorenzelli Arte, we read that the title of the exhibition is inspired precisely by a work by Arturo Bonfanti from 1955 which reveals the peculiar elements of the poetics of this artist, born in Bergamo in 1905 and who died exactly forty years ago . First of all the singular "sense of the show" that distinguishes his abstract painting. In fact, in his paintings - especially those of the 1954s and XNUMXs - it is as if the curtain were being lifted and one was witnessing an ironic and enigmatic scene, with a subtle but perceptible musical background. Bonfanti on the other hand, also as the son-in-law of the great Milanese actor Edoardo Ferravilla, has known and frequented the world of international entertainment. Calandrino's key, the puppet film with which he won an award at the XNUMX Cannes Film Festival, bears witness to how much his creativity far exceeded the confines of more orthodox abstract art, and allows us to understand the theatricality of some of his compositions with a playful and at the same time metaphysical.
An elusive grace and an essentiality that manages to be intensely expressive unite the work of Bonfanti with that of Bissier and Pasmore. Between them there is a dense network of aesthetic references in the name of allusiveness, subtlety, the ability to paint the vagueness with an extreme and paradoxical precision. An ineffable I don't know what crosswise connects these three artists who met each other personally, and poetically recognized, thanks to the Lorenzelli gallery, giving birth to a partnership that has lasted over time.
The exhibition will present a substantial nucleus of works by Bonfanti ranging from oils on canvas from the 1968 Biennale to the Reliefs and Pavatex, the latter neglected by critics up to now even if they are strikingly contemporary. To highlight the mutual creative exchange between the artists, the exhibition will include two of Pasmore's largest canvases (about 4 meters high), created and exhibited in 1974 for the Valletta Museum, and a group of watercolors and oils from the first half of the 1954s by Julius Bissier. During the inauguration, Calandrino's key will be screened, the puppet film shot in 1954 by Arturo Bonfanti with which the artist won the Prix du Film de Marionettes at the XNUMX Cannes Film Festival.
