Now in its second edition, the Habitat project delves into specific research that matured in Italy with Lucio Fontana starting from the end of the 1940s, and flourished in the 1960s, then developing with different and original trajectories up to the present day. These are works that must not simply be seen but experienced, environments that must be inhabited, habitats in which the work is the space itself that is created and shaped by the artist. The process of immersive participation of visitors, who are invited to explore the space and, for the first time, to “enter” a work of art, is completed through the exploration of the artistic space. Similarly to the Red Carpet project, Habitat shows the trajectory of an event in which visitors are placed at the centre and inside the visit experience. For the 2023 edition, ArtVerona is pleased to present two iconic environments created in the 1960s by Gianni Colombo and Marinella Pirelli. The project, made possible by the precious partnership with the Gianni Colombo Archive and the Marinella Pirelli Archive, also seeks to underline the vital importance that the Archives have for the protection, enhancement and promotion of essential representatives of Italian art.
Spazio Elastico
Gianni Colombo (Milan, 1937 – Melzo 1993) is one of the main artists of the 1960s Milan, an internationally renowned protagonist of programmed art. Thirty years after his death, ArtVerona wishes to celebrate his research and influence by presenting Spazio Elastico, a symbolic work exhibited for the first time in 1967, which in 1968 earned him the First Prize for painting at the XXXIV Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte (International Biennial Exhibition of Art) of Venice Columbo has always wondered about the implications that the ability to hear and see have with the psychic life of man; the perceptive dimension and the processes that regulate it are the basis of his work. Through very few elements, Spazio Elastico is capable of creating intellectual and emotional dizziness. The environment calls into question our perception of horizontality or verticality, simple data of our perceptive balance. The ongoing experience, our way of processing it psychically and our behaviour are the true subject of the work.
Film Ambiente
With the presentation of Film Ambiente by Marinella Pirelli (Verona, 1925 – Varese 2009), ArtVerona dedicates for the first time a tribute in her hometown to the artist who contributed to broadening the horizons of Italian experimental cinema. Marinella Pirelli has been active since the Second World War in the field of painting, as well as in the study of moving images and light environments, and stands out for her constant investigative work that led to pioneering results in the field of experimental cinema in the 1960s. Her most important work, Film Ambiente (1969), is a cinematographic structure accessible to visitors, and which underlines the innovative contribution of Pirelli to the field of Italian Expanded Cinema and the desire to create a new way of enjoying the moving image.
